Leaving Cert English Paper One
Shahed - Higher Level
The past two years have been building up to this moment and now here it was: the first day of the Leaving Cert! The first exam was English Paper 1. I wasn't nervous beforehand, as it's a nice paper to start off with (usually!) I took some time to read through the paper then dived into the questions. The texts were, for the most part, straightforward, though people were thrown when they saw Seamus Heaney in Text 3! I answered Question A on his essay, which was about the importance of objects from the past. For Question B, I wrote a talk on negative and positive influences, which was without a doubt the best question of all three, in my opinion. Next came the composing section. Luckily for me, there were two short story questions, so I was spoiled for choice. The first was about a ghostly presence that plays a significant role and the other was to be based on "...a new beast, slouching towards us... The beautiful mutant," which was taken from the second text. I chose the short story about the ghost. Over all, I think it was a good paper and am happy with how it went. Here's hoping Paper 2 is just as good!
Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.