Anyone sitting the Swedish Paper?

nilsshannon

Hi guys,

Anybody sitting the Higher Level Swedish paper on the 18th?

I am and just wondering what ye are doing to prepare for it?

Theres 11 people sitting it in total and I know 3 of them so pretty slim chance!

mirrors

I'm not sitting it but how do you know the number of people sitting a paper?

nilsshannon

Saw it in the paper there a week before the exams started. It mentioned the amount of people sitting all the non-curricular languages.

Its a pretty easy exam to be honest. Nearly everyone I know has managed to get an A1. Just one little piece of comprehension.

linguist

I wish you and all those sitting the non-curricular languages the very best. Indeed, one of my own students is taking one because I was the only teacher who basically knew of their existence - not even the guidance counsellor of the supposed exam secretary!!

That said, I have a bit of a problem with them and it is this. As the OP has pointed more or less pointed out, there is no structured course to be followed for them and as long as you've had a look over the past papers you just turn up and you should be fine. They are essentially exams for native speakers of those languages and the rationale goes that these candidates may be disadvantaged in other subjects by not having English as their first language and many of them will not be doing Irish.

Now I'm going to be controversial here but I think it needs to be said. There is no scope for or tolerance of rational debate regarding any of the assumptions in the preceding paragraph. Many of the candidates have lived in Ireland most or all of their lives. Many of them do indeed do Irish. In reality, these exams represent an easy 80-100 points in a manner that Irish candidates could only dream of. In a rush to be accommodating to newcomers and ever so PC we have, in my view, conferred on these candidates a grossly unfair advantage. Why, for example, does Spanish have a higher proportion of A grades than French or indeed German? It's an open secret among Spanish teachers that the answer lies in the tradition of Spanish students coming to Ireland to certain schools which I'll not name and then sitting LC Spanish. However, at least Spanish is a curricular language and there are questions to be answered in English, including the listening comprehension, that redresses the imbalance somewhat. These non-curricular languages were rushed onto the Leaving Cert with the EU enlargement of 2004 and it demeans a supposed education system that should be subject to rational, open discussion that they were included in the way they were.

However, that doesn't take from the fact that the OP and others will be sitting them and, on a personal level, I wish them well.

robman60

I just had a look at the Dutch paper from 2013, and I get the distinct impression that the above poster is correct. The exam consists of a solitary comprehension and two written pieces, which seems incredibly short for a Leaving Cert. exam. I also notice that it's exactly 100 marks for the paper which seems as if they're just trying to make it as quick a calculation as possible for the overall grade! Is there an oral or aural component to these exams? If not it's a joke.

Good luck in your Swedish exam anyway. Are you a native or can anyone sign up for a non-curricular language? If so, it'd probably be easier to take up a non-curricular language than doing French or German tbh.

linguist

No robman, there is no oral and no aural. It is essentially like doing English and getting a full grade for just sitting paper 1! Yes, anyone could sign up but, to be fair, the level required given they've to write a longish composition would be native speaker level. The best comparison would be to imagine that as your English exam.

derb12

Some ridiculous proportion of the Russian exam candidates get an A1 - something like 70%. Definitely not fair. The A grades in the other languages are a little more conservative.

linguist

However, at least the Russian exam has an oral and an aural and requires a course of study. However, once again, many of those presenting are Russian.