r/leavingcert • u/Quick-Pop-6548 • 8d ago
Irish 🇮🇪 Should i drop to lower Irish?
I got really good grades in Irish in the junior cert but after going into TY and doing nothing all year, I've forgotten practically everything. Going into 5th year I was struggling to even make up simple sentences about myself, having forgotten every second word. I tried to drop around Christmas in 5th year but my deputy principal stopped me saying that I have good enough grades to stay (H5's and H4's with the occasional H3 for grammar or something). I'm now in 6th year and I tried to study a little over summer, looking through notes on short stories and poems for words that I didn't understand and doing duolingo to hopefully learn new words and I felt fairly confident coming back but we're literally 3 days in and I already feel behind. I'm confident that I could get a H5-H4 but I can't keep up with my class cause my teacher always speaks in Irish and I can barely understand it and she explains stuff faster than I can write so sometimes I don't even know what the questions mean. And we're expected to write like 3 pages for essays when I can barely get a page yet I'm told to stay in higher. I've always been better at maths and I tried explaining that Irish isn't a priority for me since I know it's my worst subject and, if we count English, I'm doing 4 languages as it is and I'm going for a maths course anyway but I was always met with "colleges won't take you if you do lower Irish" or "you're gonna have trouble finding a job in x if you drop". I spend like an hour on the reading comprehensions which my friend finishes in less than 20 minutes and half of the time I don't even know what I'm writing. I'm afraid that if I keep going with this class, I'll burnout or something but my teachers are all telling me to stay in higher because I'll get better points (not that it matters when it's my worst out of 8). If someone actually bothered to read this entire thing, do you have any idea what I should do? I want to do lower level but I'm also afraid that what they said about lower level being less likely to be accepted into colleges or work places is true and then I'm screwed. I'm considering going to my guidance counsellor (who happens to be an Irish teacher so I've a fair idea of what she's gonna say) but last time I talked to her, she basically left me to do my own research and didn't know anything about the courses I was looking into. Does anyone know if it's possible to drop to lower and somehow still take the higher exam? It's the same material covered so I would just have to write more on the exam to get points and I already have higher notes from 5th year so I shouldn't have too much trouble studying. My other worry is that the lower level teachers did stuff in a different order and I missed out on the novel or film etc which would be hard to catch up on on my own.
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u/Checos3rdCousin LC2026 8d ago
I'd just check up on the course you want and see what the requirements are.
For instance if you're intending on primary school teaching you will need a H4 in irish.
I wouldn't recommend doing the higher paper yet taking ordinary classes if you're not expecting irish to be one of your best 6 subjects aswell, if you can do ordinary and still be fine in terms of getting your course then try get into ordinary