How to get H1's/A1's in the Leaving Cert

fireburn121

Hi lads, really looking for any tips and tricks that helped you achieve an A1/H1 in Irish, Chemistry, Maths, English, Art, Biology and French, I was really sick last year and missed a lot of days in school, and my summer test score wasn't great but before this I was getting good marks. I am willing to do anything to improve my marks and currently spending 4hrs a night on study, should I increase this amount?. How many hours study did you do a night? any tips on how to study effectively? just anything you did to get a H1/A1, it would honestly mean the world to me if you did, I really think I can do it if I put in the work
open to any advice
Thanks

tedpan

How to all, what does that mean? I think you need to read and write more to get an A1 in English for starters.

spurious

Someone without any talent for Art is highly unlikely to get an A1. Sometimes it's not as simple as just working hard. Do you really think people who do not get high marks are not trying?

That said, if you missed a large part of last year due to sickness, the first option I would explore is to resit fifth year and give yourself a decent chance at the exam first time. It's a two year course.

randylonghorn

Let's have less of the grammar-nazism please, especially as people post a lot from phones these days, and predictive text has an uncanny ability to mangle English if you're not watching very closely.

tedpan

randylonghorn wrote:

Let's have less of the grammar-nazism please, especially as people post a lot from phones these days, and predictive text has an uncanny ability to mangle English if you're not watching very closely.

I understand Randy, although the OP wants to be perfect by completing his LC with all A1s. He needs to have total attention to detail and focus to achieve this.

Smircle

Hi! I just did my LC this June and did some of the subjects you've mentioned. As cliché as it is, everyone is different - 4 hours a night - to me - seems more than enough, even if you missed out on some time last year. Honestly, the information I 'learned' in fifth year did not remain with me until sixth year, especially for the likes of Biology and French.

For English, you're going to have to practice. I only got a H2, so I'm not of much help with the 'H1' situation, but I know I didn't practice enough. If you want to write an essay every night, go ahead; I planned essays - structures, that is; I'd write a brief plan of what I would put it in each paragraph were I to actually write it, along with suitable quotes. Oh - quotes are pretty important, so learn them well in advance and use ones that can be applied to many themes. For poetry - well, know at least 5 poets: I was banking on Plath this year and was really not prepared for her not appearing, so know them them all well and go through past papers to see what kinds of questions come up for them. They're all pretty similar - usually theme/imagery/etc., and there's only a certain number of ways they can ask those questions, so they tend to be asking the same general question, just phrased a little differently.

Irish - I dropped on the day (not my proudest moment), so I'm not of much help here. Just don't leave everything until last minute like I did, and learn vocabulary as you go along. A lot of marks go for grammar, so keeping structures simple but grammatically correct is better than long and complex ones that make no sense ...

French - 'on ne sait jamais' - you can't imagine how many times I used that in essays ... Again, learn vocabulary as you go along, practice for the aural, and just speak french as much as you can. I downloaded an app called 'Memrise' and it gave me random - but useful - vocabulary, and I found it really helped. Conjunctions can be pretty helpful, as can little phrases like 'je dois admettre', 'on ne peut pas nier que', 'étant donné que', etc. Conjugating verbs is essential and you really need to be able to switch from tenses with ease. Not sure if it would be helpful, but I listened to french songs - movies were too long, but songs were short and repeatable, and I learned a lot of vocabulary from them. 'Elle Me Dit' by Mica is one of my favourites :P

Maths - I somehow pulled off a H2 in this, despite not understanding how to do financial Maths, but again: not a H1. Just practice exam questions, know your theorems (haven't been on the past two years) and try to refrain from looking up the answers if you can't figure them out.

Biology - people seem to use mindmaps a lot for this subject. Honestly, I just read the book and took notes of the main points/key words from the chapters. Definitions are important in this subject, so know them really well. It's pretty much rote learning for this subject, but there are a bunch of videos online to try and breathe some life into the subject, especially if you had a teacher like mine who literally just read from PowerPoint slides for every class ...

Chemistry - this was my favourite subject and I found it really interesting! The first few chapters were a bit dull, but organic chemistry and equilibrium are pretty interesting, especially if you get to do the experiments. Towards the end, we ran out of time and just watched them online, which really took the intrigue out of the subject for me. Definitions are important, so know them well - and also know the layout of the paper: first three questions are always experiments (1 is organic, 1 is a titration and the other can be anything), 4th is short questions, and there's usually a water/equilibrium question in the mix somewhere. Practice calculations and actually understand the theory behind them, it really does make it easier to know why you're putting a number in a certain place, rather than just doing it 'cause the formula says so.

Studyclix is a pretty helpful site, I found. The answers were right under the question, which really was proof of how little will-power I have, but they break the questions into sections, which I found pretty helpful. There's also links to videos and other resources, which can be useful if you're struggling with a certain topic. Khan Academy also is useful for Chemistry/Maths, And I'm sure there are loads more resources out there.

There are no quick ways to getting H1s, unfortunately. Sometimes, things just don't go well on the day - it happened with me for English this year, my essay just wasn't up to its usual standard. Just work consistently and at a pace you can keep up - doing 6 hours a night, but spending half that time staring at the horse in the field behind your house isn't productive. I used to do my written homework first, then do 45-50 minutes of study on 3/4 subjects, then change those subjects for the ones I didnt the previous day. It works for some, it doesn't work for others - some do them all, some do one or two. Find out now what works for you and what doesn't. Just don't over/underdo it - leaving everything until last minute can be just as bad as overloading yourself (I manged to do both last year). My advice would be to be consistent and seriously focus on whatever it is you're studying as you study it - try not to get distracted. Give yourself breaks in between subjects, get exercise, have something outside of academics to do - a sport, a club, reading - just something to remind you that there's more than the LC in your life.

It's a stressful year, without a doubt; but you're going to get through it and you'll have the whole summer ahead of you, with no exams looming in the distance. Figure out what works best for you and stick with that - I know that's nothing you don't already know :P

I wish you all the best in the coming months and hope everything works out for you Sorry for the length of this, by the way; once I get going, I just don't stop :P

Bonne chance!

blueee

Four hours is plenty, remember that it's only September!

The oral is a huge percentage of the overall mark for Irish, so make sure you don't focus too much on all of those poems and stories. They are only worth about 5% each, whereas the oral is 40%! They ask the same basic questions in the Irish oral over and over again, so if you learn off a ton of answers you'll ace it. The more you engage with the language, the more you read it and write it, the more comfortable you'll become with it, so by the time the orals come around you can feel pretty confident that you'll be able to deal with whatever they throw at you. Also, the sraith pictiúir are worth something like 13%, so if you put a bit of work into them you could get a nice chunk of the marks there.
For Irish essays, the language you use is EVERYTHING. It is all about the flowery phrases as opposed to simple language. So learn off a bunch of lovely phrases that you can shove into any essay and that will make the examiner swoon!


For English, a lot of it is about exam technique. I think one of my biggest tips would be to think of the given question as a GOD. Keep referring back to it. You might have heard people give that advice before but it is so important! Every single sentence you write must revolve around and be directly related to the question. And read the question VERY carefully.
For the Shakespeare play (I presume you are doing Shakespeare), learn loads of quotes to show how familiar you are with the text and spend a lot of time thinking about the play in general and give yourself the time to form opinions on it. It's the same with poetry and the comparative. It may sound tedious, but to do really well just give yourself the time to think about the texts you are studying and come up with your own ideas. That will be invaluable and it is what the examiners are looking for!

pianoperson

English: The most important thing in English is to develop opinions about the texts you’re studying, and to go the little bit extra in your analysis and interpretations. I was always told that LC English was about saying what the examiner wants to hear rather than what you actually think, but in my Leaving Cert I went completely on my own interpretation, opinion and personal response and got 99%! For Paper 1, the comprehensions are easy marks- give a well developed paragraph with a PEQ for every 5 marks, answer the question asked and you’ll be rewarded. Also be able to pick out features of the five styles of writing. For the Section B functional writing, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Learn the basic structure for the various different options that could be asked, be aware of tone and register and then it’s all just practicing and answering the question that is being asked. For the composition, it’s all a matter of writing as much as you possibly can. Read, read, read- it’s the only way you’ll start to realise how language flows and fits together in a way that makes it pleasing to read. However, I know that 6th year makes it very difficult to find the time to read loads of novels or short stories so here’s my weirdest piece of advice: read fanfiction. Archiveofourown.org has a search function where you can look up stories via “fandom” and then “tags” pertaining to whatever sort of topics you want to read about. The reason I recommend this is because fanfic sites have a lot of bad bad stories, but also some gems, and when you start reading them you begin to realise what makes a story worth reading, engaging and well written, and you’ll be able to apply this to your own writing! I’d read them on my phone on the journey to school and it really helps with plot ideas too, I’d honestly so recommend it.

Paper 2 is all about opinions and engagement. For your single text (probably Shakespeare?), read analysis beyond and watch Crash Course videos if there are ones for your text (I found the Hamlet ones extremely helpful). Try to find out a way that the plot or characters relate to your own life and why the story has persevered to modern days. Have some sort of personal theory that will set you apart from everyone else- I decided that Ophelia is the true hero in Hamlet. Have some quotes that work for everything, but I wouldn’t waste time learning off reams of notes- the best Shakespeare quotes are nice and sticky.

The comparative was the bane of my existence- my teacher never gave me above a H2 in the many, many, many practice essays I did and I ended up with 69/70 in the real thing. My main advice would be to have a list of headings to compare the texts under in each mode, but to try to have these a bit different than the usual ones given in revision notes. For General Vision and Viewpoint I had things like the power of language, significance of voices, societal obligations, and other things that just showed that you actually thought about the texts. Have some short quotations, but remember this is about comparing, not the single texts, so besides for your ‘anchoring paragraph’, never spend more than two sentences in a row on the same text. Link using comparing words between paragraphs also.
Unseen poetry is the same as the comprehension in P1, know your techniques and give a PEQ+ personal response in each paragraph, with 5 marks per paragraph.

Poetry is all about personal response. Engage with poets, and pick your 5 poets based on who you genuinely love and engage with. I would recommend writing topic by topic and not poem by poem- for example, for a poetry question on Eliot, I would have one paragraph on the theme of false appearances/masks, one on destruction and desolation, one on time, one on imagery and one on the literary allusions in his work. I would also have an introduction containing some sort of quotation, a second last paragraph that gave some sort of observation I thought was relatively unique and a conclusion to wrap it all up, obviously with tweaks to suit the question. I think this works better than a paragraph per poem as it shows you’re analysing the work as a whole and not the works as separate entities. I watched a video on YouTube that talked about the “3% word”, the word in the question that makes the question unique and that you must address to set yourself apart, usually an adjective- for example, in the 2017 Keats’ question I would say that the word is “profound”. Poetry questions are all on personal response so engage, engage, engage- be a bit narcissistic by applying poetry to your own life and showing why it matters to you.

Overall, English is about answering the question asked and showing your personal engagement with the texts.


Maths- I always found maths fine for LC and I’m studying it in university now. However, I found maths a lot more difficult for JC, so I can relate to the struggle. Practice, practice, practice…then practice again. For Junior Cert, I did every question in the textbook and every exam question twice. Somewhere amidst that madness, it all ‘clicked’ and fell into place for me and truly understood it all, and have loved maths since. So all I can say is practice and try to understand why you’re doing things- view maths as a creative process, as a language, with an intertwined nature across all the topics rather than as a set of steps to be learned off.


Irish- perfect your grammar. Seriously, once your grammar is perfect you’ve already gotten a high grade in the exam. After that, prioritise the oral- I wouldn’t go rote learning anything- get your flawless grammar, learn some ‘saibhreas na teanga’ phrases and vocabulary specific to more topical issues (the health system, Brexit, social issues) and you’ll fly it. Sraiths are a necessary evil- they were the only things I rote learned but in hindsight I could have used the same strategy of phrases and perfect grammar and done just as well. Reading the poem is the handiest task in the whole LC so just perfect that early on. The essay is all about your grammar and saibhreas na teanga so your oral will help you with that. Aural is just some practise- if you’re scoring low marks in this section watch TG4 nuacht every night and it’ll start to work for you, and learn the leathan/caol trick for spelling. Paper 2 comprehensions are fine, know your grammar titles and basic info about genre for the Q6. The rest of the paper is just your grammar and knowing some basic info- themes and characters for all the stories: then bealoideas for Oisin, humour and women for Dis, drama techniques and metaphor in Lasair Choille, Celtic Tiger in Hurlamaboc and Troubles in An Gnathrud; theme, stylistic techniques and poets for the poem; for extra literature I did An Triail which was theme, characters, dramatic techniques and social context.

However, my most important piece of advice is to take care of yourself and not to work too hard. I pushed myself far too much last year, and despite ending up with a lot of points and my first choice, I can say in hindsight that the lengths I went to were not worth the damage I did to my health and my mind. This was far longer than I expected but I hope it helps a little bit, take care and feel free to get in contact if I can help anymore!

Fifii

Hey, just thought I'd give you some advice about Bio and Art- 2 very hard subjects to get H1s in. 4.9% received a H1 in biology, compared with over 10% in both physics and chemistry, and art- the lowest H1 rate at 1.2%! I'm not saying this to discourage you but to help you understand that in order to get top marks in these subjects, you can't neglect these 2 'easy' subjects.
Art- Over 60% of this exam is practical work so you need to make sure that every piece you submit is of a H1 standard. Whether your Da Vinci or draw like a 3 year old, its crucial that you find what exactly works for you- give yourself one or 2 weeks to try as many styles and forms of craft and drawing that you can and identify your strong points. Then its a matter of deciding your medium and practice, practice, practice. Last year, I practiced drawing my sister every week under exam settings and after each sitting I would ask my teacher to critique it. Similarly. whenever I needed a break from studying maths, I would switch into a bit of still life. Make sure you complete these, and as you get better, do it under exam settings. The craft is something that you simply need to have the basics down before you get the brief in April, at which point its about using a bit of creativity . By basics, I mean like lettering and spacing for posters or sewing for puppets.
Don't be disheartened if you aren't H1 at drawing, some people think its a natural talent but I know from looking back over my work that if you keep practicing and taking criticism on board, you can get there. Also, make sure that you chose the right medium for you- paint,pastels or charcoal can make even a poor student seem much better!
Finally, the written. Be smart about it, if they always ask a question from a particular time in a section (eg. Prechristian Ireland in section 1, Baroque art in section 2, museum in section 3), study that. I studied sooo many things, when if I had studied smart, I would have only done those 3 periods. Make sure you know your key 'buzzwords' for each period/ artist. For my leaving cert, I didn't answer the museum question but the street art one- which I had no prep done on, so maybe some examiners like to see original thought?

Biology- I read the book/ my class notes and then I condensed down each chapter (bar reproduction and the sensory system) to one page full of tiny writing with the key info , and revised by re-writing them out. This only works if you already have an understanding of the material so try to get to grips with everything, especially systems such as Photosynthesis, Respiration, transpiration. After that, I would just say make sure you know your experiments and then do all the sample papers that you can!
Best of luck with everything!