It was a race to the finish for higher-level German candidates at St Louis High School, Rathmines. Teacher Ms Siobhan Supple said students "were really pushed for time".
Mr Helmut Sundermann of the German Teachers Association said students may have been confused by the literary comprehension text, which involved the identification of people in a number of photographs. The vocabulary was fine, but the syntax of the passage was occasionally complex and intricate.
In the grammar section, he said the second part of the exercise, which focused on indirect speech, was superfluous. The journalistic text was appropriate for the age level of students but question 4(b) asked students to answer in German a question they had already covered in English.
Students also found it difficult to switch between languages, he noted. The multiple choice synonyms required in 4(c) were difficult, said Mr Sundermann, who teaches in St Killian's German School, Dublin. There were no line references in the questions, as there had been in the past.
The written section was fine, particularly the letter option. Most students would have been well prepared and would have come up with good answers, he said. Students tended to avoid the cartoon option although the questions were fine.
The listening comprehension was difficult and students could have done with more time to answer the questions, Mr Sundermann said.
ASTI subject representative Ms Eleanor Jones, who teaches in the Ursuline school, Waterford, agreed that students found the tape difficult, especially sections 2 and 3, where the context was outside their experience. Section 2 dealt with a girl dressed up as a bee, working in a garden centre, while section 3 was about two families sharing a car.
The written paper was fine, she said, though the new-format applied grammar section, which asked for adjectival endings, was difficult. The synonyms at the end of the second text were also difficult, said Ms Jones.
At ordinary level, Ms Supple said the paper was appropriate to students' level, though they were disappointed at being asked to write a letter about a dog; they would have preferred to write about jobs like their higher-level colleagues.