How much work HL Irish

tianna

Irish has always been my worst subject. I got a B in the junior cert but I don't know how :P when we get essays to do for homework I generally get B2s but that's having all my notes in front of me my dictionary etc.
In my 5th year summer test I only got 65% and I knew which essay was coming up.
I'm only doing 7 subjects (all higher level) and I am aiming for quite high points so I want to keep up HL Irish incase, as a backup if one exam goes badly.
I know with languages you have to build them up over time.
I guess my question is do you think I would be able to get up to a B1 standard by June? (I need a bit of reassurance )
How much Irish study should I be doing every week to get there?

Deleted User

Here's something I posted in a relatively similar thread.. If you have any specific questions; just PM me

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm just gonna post here as what seems to be the forum's resident defender of HL Irish.
I would always advise to stick with HL for as long as you can. I know everyone has probably said this to you and you're fed up of people saying it because it's not what you want. It's exactly how I felt when people tried to convince me to stay at HL (And I'm so glad they did convince me)
I don't know about your teacher but mine was an incredibly hard marker. Constant low Bs and high Cs throughout and then I got an A2. There is a misconception that you need to be fluent to do well and that's just not true.
Lets put it into perspective; how much are the prose/ poems worth? 10% of the whole paper! (There is the chance to get more marks for saying the poem in the oral than writing about it on the paper for God's sake!)
That's the same as the tape and much less than the reading comprehensions. And you never see either of these until the day. Then there's the oral for 40%. The extra literature can be handy... I personally loved An Triail and could tackle any question on it!
Lowest result in my class was a C1 or something like that and my teacher had been failing this person.
Like I said, I don't know your teacher but I still think you should stay at HL as long as possible. Sure then if you do drop OL will seem so much easier

tianna wrote: »

Irish has always been my worst subject. I got a B in the junior cert but I don't know how :P when we get essays to do for homework I generally get B2s but that's having all my notes in front of me my dictionary etc.
In my 5th year summer test I only got 65% and I knew which essay was coming up.
I'm only doing 7 subjects (all higher level) and I am aiming for quite high points so I want to keep up HL Irish incase, as a backup if one exam goes badly.
I know with languages you have to build them up over time.
I guess my question is do you think I would be able to get up to a B1 standard by June? (I need a bit of reassurance )
How much Irish study should I be doing every week to get there?

Some specific answers to what you posted....
I also got a B in my JC, got an A2 in the LC. With a 40% oral, everything changes. I got ~C1s in my essays etc.. with notes and dictionaries.
That's exactly it, the language will build up over time as you start practicing it more. I know I started to spot overlapping vocab in my notes so what was once hard vocabulary became such a common word for me to use.
A B1 is definitely achievable
The study should be divided by the weightings each section has on your final mark. So, spend most time on your oral (40%) > reading comprehensions (~18%)> Essays > listening > litríocht breise (An Triail etc) > everything else (stories and poems). It's so easy to get bogged down learning all the stories and poems but they are only 5% of the exam each. Everything else is much more important.