Irish Teachers

Mr.Helpful

To all the Irish teachers out there,

I am currently an undergrad studying in the area of estate agency and valuations however I've always had a love for the Irish language. I speak almost everyday with really realising it, sad I know!:D

Anyways for those teachers who have done their BA in Irish. I have a few questions for you which I hope you might answer:

Where did you do your degree?
Do you need a high standard Irish in order to fully understand whats going on ( I got a C2 at ardleibheál in the LC) Would that be sufficent?
Is the course intensive?
Would you recommend getting to high standard of written and oral irish before setting out to do this course.

Please feel free to add anything else!

Many thanks in advance!

Richard.

Toto Wolfcastle

I did my Irish degree in UCC. On the first day there were two guys sitting behind me and when the lecturer started speaking in Irish they were totally lost. They had obviously done well in school but that's different to university. They graduated when I graduated with good degrees. They managed this because they were immersed in the language from day one. If you speak it regularly then you obviously have some grasp of it. This will improve with work if you do your degree in Irish.

However, I would strongly advise that you ensure that you have a high level of written Irish as you will be writing essays through Irish and if you don't have a good enough grasp of it then you wont be understood and will lose marks. Oral Irish is something, I suppose, that can be worked on over time but again you need to have a good grasp of it to begin with. Most importantly, you need to be able to understand spoken Irish and written Irish.

I wouldn't say the course I did was intensive but there were a lot of lectures to attend as well as language labs, conversation classes and grammar classes. We studied a wide range of subjects relating to the Irish language. I think that had I not gone to an Irish-speaking secondary school I would have found it difficult. It's by no means impossible though so if you want it and think you will be able for it then go for it.

Mr.Helpful

Cheers for that janey!

I think I 'll have to give it some serious thought because my spoken irish is ok but the writing is another story altogether.

Many thanks your helpful post!

dory

I did my BA in Maynooth. I also went to an Irish speaking secondary but most of my friends who came out with 2.1s didn't. They were quite lost during the first year but they really worked. Getting a good level of fluency beforehand would make life much easier, but you could also do that during the course.
Basically, if you can sit and listen to someone speak in Irish for an hour and understand then you'll be fine. The TV can be a good indication but they speak faster on that and are not addressing a crowd really. I have trouble understanding the TV sometimes.

I would not say it was intensive; two 800 word essays every semester. If you attend all the classes, maybe get some extra conversation classes and then swallow a grammar book you should be fine. Lots of people with bad standards of Irish came out with a BA in the end!
Also teg.ie is great to give yourself a qualification in your own time.

Rosita

Mr.Helpful wrote: »

Cheers for that janey!

I think I 'll have to give it some serious thought because my spoken irish is ok but the writing is another story altogether.

Many thanks your helpful post!

I think it is important for people to keep ideas that their spoken Irish is okay in context.

People might think their ability to be relatively "fluent" in using a very small vocabulary amounts to their spoken Irish being good but in, say, an oral Irish exam it can be a different matter.

For example in one of my oral exams I was asked to explain the reasons for the outbreak of World War One. These people can expose you badly very easily with an apparently innocent question that you cannot answer in the required mood or tense, and of course while you might think you are dojng well in giving them the information, they are watching how you say it and couldn't care less about what you know or don't or whether you can remember the magic piece of vocab that you have learnt off before the exam. And they know almost instinctively where you are at standard-wise by your use of repetition and stock phrases.

It is also fair to say that very few people will be really good speakers if they cannot write Irish accurately as all the limitations of their vocabulary and accuracy will be reflected both in written and spoken. There is also a chasm -and it can be quite a one - in the stages of language learning between being able to understand a conversation, even a lengthy one, for gist and being able to conversely comfortably and confidently yourself.

It is very very difficult when you have to study to develop spoken ability and I would strongly recommend that you do as much to enhance it in advance as possible because while determination and ambition in the first instance is good, life has a funny way of getting in the way when you have assignments to do and classes to attend.

Also an inability to fully understand lecturers - all of whom will be proficient speakers - will lead to poor note-taking etc. if you cannot understand the stuff well enough so this will lead to problems. So to answer yoru question, yes you do need a high standard of Irish to understand fully what is going on but the ability to get on with it even when you don't understand fully what is going on is important.

Also, I found academic Irish fairly boring with the likes of 17th century poetry less than stimulating much of the time, so it is one thing to like/love the language in the abstract, quite another to study it in university. This is not just Irish of course, academic courses tend to take the joy out of all things. But it is no harm to be aware of that and to realise that 'boring' and 'insurmountably difficult' are not the same thing by any means. You just need to be able to stick at it and realise that the majority of it will probably be quite unenjoyable.

The beauty of it is that despite what the 'ban Irish' brigade would have you believe it is the one language that you'll actually use. I have never spoken to any of my classmates from college in anything other than Irish. This is certainly not the case with friends who have studied German or French etc. There are conduits for it outside of a school context which is probably not the case for any other language (I am leaving English out of this obviously), so while the road can be long and lonely what price can you put on the ability to be able to speak our own language is the face of all the invective of the cynics and naysayers.

It is hard to say if the course I studied (in UCD) was "intensive" because that word means different things to different people. I was studying two subjects and found little enough time to develop skills outside of that such as conversational ability, so the ability you bring to it initially is a strong indicator of where you are likely to find yourself in the end unless you are an exceptionally driven person with quite an amount of time available to you. At the same time we can get hung up on the need for a standard starting out. A friend of mine lectures German in university and never studied it at school, so hard work and presumably an aptitude for languages can get around much of that.

But you have the massive advantage of wanting to do it which almost certainly means it'd be no great bother to you even if much of what I wrote probably sounded terribly negative. I just wanted to put the other side of it to you.

implausible

Rosita wrote: »

For example in one of my oral exams I was asked to explain the reasons for the outbreak of World War One.

What?! What has that got to do with your proficiency in Irish? That's a history question to which many people's answer would be "Níl fhios agam".

OP, my experience of Irish as an Arts subject echoes some of Dory's comments. I didn't go to a Gaelcholáiste, but got my 2.1 nonetheless. The first few weeks were tough, getting used to lectures through Irish, but I soon got the hang of it. You often forget just how much Irish you actually know. I didn't find the course that intensive, a few long essays (longer and more complicated that LC HL), but you have lots of time to prepare.

If you want, you can hang out with other Irish speakers and this will improve your fluency no end. And as for the written, I often found that my grammar and spelling was better than many of the native speakers.

I also did my HDip through Irish and after doing Irish for my B.A. found it grand.

The idea that only native speakers and people schooled through Irish would be able for a B.A. in Irish is daft. It's also a little snobbish and exclusionist. Like any language, if you have a decent standard, an aptitude for language and are motivated to learn, you'll be well able for it!

Toto Wolfcastle

Often some of those who have come from English speaking schools do better than those who come from Irish speaking schools. There are numerous reasons for this. My best friend in college went to an English speaking school and had a much wider vocabulary and a better grasp of grammar than some of the students from Irish speaking schools. The latter tended to take it for granted that they knew everything.

If you are willing to put the work in then you will be fine. I'd equate it to my first day in secondary school. I went to an English speaking primary school and when confronted with non-stop Irish on the first day I was totally lost. Within 2 weeks I was fine. You pick it up through immersion.

prancer

Where can you do a HDip through Irish- In my final year now of my BA and want to do that?

Im doing my Irish degree in Mary I and its brilliant- i had a high enough standard going in but you do pick it up as you go along! Going into 4th year now but really want to go on and do the HDIP as gaelinn! Can anybody tell me what colleges do it??

Toto Wolfcastle

prancer wrote: »

Where can you do a HDip through Irish- In my final year now of my BA and want to do that?

Im doing my Irish degree in Mary I and its brilliant- i had a high enough standard going in but you do pick it up as you go along! Going into 4th year now but really want to go on and do the HDIP as gaelinn! Can anybody tell me what colleges do it??

NUIG do it. You can get the form on www.pac.ie or probably through your careers centre in college. If you want to go straight into your hdip (now the PGDE) after your degree you should apply this year. The closing date is sometime in December. You will be basing your application on your 3rd year results and will have to do some sort of exam also.

prancer

thanks so much! thats so helpful i can apply anyways. I was out teaching for my 3rd year in a secondary school so i wasnt in the college studying. Is it handy to have teaching experience before going in? Also is it very hard or is it manageable?

Toto Wolfcastle

Teaching experience can be counted towards your points to get into the course, depending on how many hours you have. It will of course help you with the teaching aspect of the course. If you have done your degree in Irish you will have no problems. It is an intense course but it's worth it. (I didn't do it through Irish but friends of mine did.)

implausible

janeybabe wrote: »

You will be basing your application on your 3rd year results and will have to do some sort of exam also.

It's nearly ten years since I did mine, but it was an oral exam that I had to do. There was also a written exam, mainly translation I think. None of it too intense. It wasn't as difficult to get into as the Dip through English as obviously the numbers applying were less.

Dionysus

Very interesting thread. Somebody mentioned the importance of having a good standard of written Irish in order to do well in the BA in Irish. I intend going into the second year of the BA in Irish next year; I did first year about 5 years ago. Would any of you have some good suggestions regarding ways I could improve my written Irish?

I'm starting the weekly Bord na Gaeilge course in college this month in order to take the meirg off my Irish so that should keep me on my toes. For me, listening to, and understanding, the lectures in Irish was the easier part of college. Writting essays in good Irish was a different matter for me. I haven't cracked it yet so I'd really appreciate some learner autonomy stuff in order to improve my written Irish every weekend before I go back to uni for 2nd year. If any of you know of a book that could give me some structure towards improving this aspect that would be most helpful. Thanks.

dory

For written Irish reading a lot would help. Read anything you can. Very simple books, maybe Junior Cert standard would help with word order if that's a problem for you, then read some Leaving Cert if that's too easy for grammar.
What you should ideally be able to do is look at every seimhiu, every uru and everything that is out of the ordinary, and you should know why that is there. If you don't, find out!
Urchursa Gaeilge is the book that got me through college, if you take those chapters one at a time your grammar will greatly improve.
Also, reading newspapers as Gaeilge is always helpful for getting new vocabulary.

Mr.Helpful

Many thanks to all who replied your expericences, good and bad and advice were very much appreciated. Having read all the replies I think I should work on all aspects of irish before I contemplate studying irish as a degree.

Many thanks again to all involved!


*TAXI----Conradh na Gaeilge please!* :P