Leaving Cert German - post-mortem: Some 9,000 students sat their German exam yesterday, an exam which was described as "modern" and "accessible".
The number of students taking German as a Leaving Cert subject continues to fall as Spanish becomes a more favoured choice among students.
Historically, German is perceived as being a difficult subject to score highly in, with the majority of students opting to take French at Leaving Cert level.
Recently, however, students have been opting to take Spanish because they are more familiar with the country.
Germany was traditionally seen as a country with plenty of employment. But now Spain is where people go on holiday, and it's a good reason to learn a language, according to Ms Ann McKiernan, an ASTI spokeswoman.
Ms McKiernan said a drop-off in the numbers of students taking German was evident in her school, and the number of Spanish classes is double that of German. She added that, although German is perceived as a more difficult subject to learn, any language is demanding of students.
Yesterday's higher-level paper covered themes that were linked with student role-play and picture-sequence work.
However, the grammar section was described as challenging.
Ms Anne Marie Ní Dhomhnaill, a German teacher at Colaiste de hIde, Tallaght, Dublin, said: "You'll find some students coming into secondary school who don't know the difference between a noun and an adjective, and it's difficult for students who are not au fait with their own grammar."
She said that some students might also have had difficulty with the letter section of the paper."If you hadn't done a project or read a book you would have been at a disadvantage.
The ordinary-level paper was described as fair, and had topics overlapping from students' oral work. Students and teachers said the themes of the paper were modern, and the texts interesting for students to read.
The listening comprehension caused some problems among teachers as they felt students should be allowed five minutes to read the questions on the paper, as with the French exam.
Ms Ní Dhomhnaill said: "The argument is that the time is a bit longer for the German exam, and the reading time is incorporated into the tape.
"But I think all students should be allowed five minutes to read the questions, regardless of what language they're doing."