IT'S that time of the year again and Junior and Leaving Cert students are beginning to panic about the amount of work they have to get through in between now and the start of the exams. Certainly compressing a year or two's work into a few short weeks is no joke. But many students forget that in quite a number of subjects they already have a considerable number of marks underneath their belts.
Anyone sitting Leaving Certificate German, French, Spanish, Italian, Irish or foundation Irish for example, has already taken the oral part of the exams. This test accounts for 20 per cent of the total marks at ordinary level, in all languages except Irish and foundation Irish. The Irish and foundation Irish oral exams account for 25 per cent of the total marks awarded. Meanwhile at higher level, the oral exams account for one quarter of the total marks.
Honours students are awarded a higher proportion of their marks for the oral because the exam is considered a demanding one. The written exams in these subjects account for no more than three quarters of the total marks. If you've been working steadily for your exams, the chances are that you've done well in your orals and you are unknowingly the possessor of a reasonable proportion of your final marks.
In a number of subjects, practical and project work, all of which is completed well before the written exams take place, account for at least half the total marks. Take higher level Leaving Certificate engineering. Out of a total of 600 marks, the written exam accounts for only 300 marks while the project and the practical exam account for 150 marks each. At ordinary level, engineering is marked out of 500, with the practical exam and project together accounting for 300 marks.
From the student's point of view the practical exam has one major drawback - mistakes are well nigh impossible to rectify. "It's much easier in a written exam to retrieve a mistake," notes Dr Lawrence Smyth, who teaches engineering at Falcarragh Community School, Co Donegal. Students are often nervous and underperform, he says. However, project work which is carried out over a period of time, enables students to show initiative and inventiveness, he believes. "Many students work to an extremely high level and do well in project work. Even years later at university they will tell you that they learned most from the project work," he says. "It gives them a great sense of achievement and helps to steady them going into the written exams."
STUDENTS taking Leaving Cert construction studies can also relax in the knowledge that practicals and projects account for exactly half the marks at higher level and for sixty per cent of marks at ordinary level. "In theory you could have half your marks before the written exam starts," says Pat Geaney who teaches construction studies at St Enda's Community School, Limerick. "It's a fantastic cushion to have done more than half the exam. It takes a lot of uncertainty out of the written exam."
For agricultural science students at both levels, project work represents one quarter of the total marks. "It's a great bonus for students," confirms Patrick McGarry, who teaches agricultural science at Carndonagh Community, School. Students pick their project topic themselves and they normally achieve higher marks for the project than they do for the written exam, he says. However, McGarry believes that ordinary level students should receive higher marks for their projects. For Leaving Certificate agricultural economics' students their project is worth up to 80 marks out of a total of 400.
By the time the written exam comes around, Leaving Certificate music students already may have gained half their marks. Together aurals and practicals account for nearly 60 per cent of total marks at higher level and just under two thirds of the total marks at ordinary level..
Leaving Certificate art students go into their exams having already achieved up to one quarter of their total marks (100 out of a total of 400). The practical craft or design exam takes place in May. This year students were given the paper a week in advance in order to enable them to prepare for the exam. "The fact that students had the exam papers a week in advance helped them enormously," comments Natasha Donaghy, who teaches art at Deansrath Community College, Clondalkin, Co Dublin. "They worked well and were very relaxed."
