Report throws the book at class of `96

THE ASTI says the report is "dyspeptic" other have praised its bluntness and honesty. But everyone agrees that of all the examiners' reports the Department of Education has published the English report is the best read.

The report throws the book at last year's English students (to use a cliche the examiners would surely deplore), accusing them of "mental indigestion", "banalities", "offensive language", carelessness in relation to spelling, paragraphing, punctuation, grammar and syntax, not to mention a series of howlers gleefully reproduced at the end of the document.

"Many students even very good ones, judging from their familiarity with texts can no longer write grammatically. Their writing is frequently illogical, muddled and at times incomprehensible. Yet they appear to think they are making sense.

It lists the common causes of failure, among them

. An inability to read and interpret questions

. Lack of focus the substitution of narrative and summary for discussion and analysis

. Failure to understand critical terms: impoverished vocabulary

. Over writing and needless repetition

. "Rampant irrelevance"

The examiners bemoan the prevalence of banalities and pessimism in students' writing. They also single out their proclivity towards writing about teenage preoccupations which might seem understandable, given that most of them are teenagers.

The report shows up a number of short cuts some schools are obviously following. These include preprepared essays, many repeating the same ideas in identical language, and a tendency to study only part of the course. Thus, many schools study only Anglo Irish poetry, and an aversion to long poems such as Paradise Lost is common among teachers.

The examiners wonder what can be done to discourage these practices. Yet surely the Department, above anyone else, has it in its power to do something.

Although the standard of answers has improved in fiction, poetry and the modern novel, the examiners still find plenty to dislike. They say teenagers' vocabularies have become very limited, adding. "Perhaps they always were".

"Candidates are becoming increasingly inept at understanding words and expressions including critical terminology that could have been taken for granted a small number of years ago, the report adds.