Any elation after yesterday's written Leaving Cert Italian papers was quickly dissipated. The happiness of students at Scoil Eoin, CBS, Athy, Co Kildare, turned to gloom when they heard the aural tape. "The aural tape was extremely difficult," said Mr Aidan Farrell, who teaches at the school. "I had 26 students sitting the exam and they came out really disappointed." Some of the speakers on the tape had spoken extremely rapidly, while a number of the questions were very demanding.
Students at both levels found the tapes difficult, he said. "You would want to be fluent to pull out the meaning of a lot of it." Happily, his students at both levels were pleased with the written papers. At higher level, questions included a journalistic passage on poverty and racism and an unseen literary passage from Una Bambina Basta by Lia Levi. The ordinary-level paper was a lot more demanding this year than it had been in the previous two years. Nonetheless "it was not too bad", he said. Ms Maura McCarthy, who teaches at St Joseph's College, Lucan, Co Dublin, found the higher-level paper "very very demanding", with difficult vocabulary.