junior cert english essay samples

junior cert english essay samples

Junior Cert English Essay Samples

1. Introduction

We do a few exercises/cartoon strips every fortnight to read which follow the same order the following day on things like how to make bread or cartoons which can make us laugh. Then the second day we do it efficiently and do the work based on the exercises. Every so often we are given questions to answer the day after reading something as a comprehension. I love it when we do really good questions to do. An explanation question, separate nails the question and part questions separately. But there aren’t really that many types of exercises for English that we do unfortunately. My teacher, Mr. Baseggio said that one night, he might give us a load of words that we must make sentences with for example: – mighty – extreme – sturdy – unusual – venture (in our English creative copy) apart from our copy we might have to write them into our spelling copy. Exercises are VERY important in this very hard subject of English because it helps us elaborate on sentences and prepare us for essays for the Junior Cert before it’s too late. Not to mention for descriptive and narrative creatives also.

English is a really difficult subject, everything in preparation for the junior cert is mostly oriented around essays, essays… AND MORE ESSAYS! I find heading into the exam easier with a few sample essays to help build my confidence knowing I can elaborate on at least one sort of essay subject. Step by step, bullet by bullet, example by example on how to attempt different types of essays that would be present in an exam. I used to like English, sometimes we do booklets for the month, that have spellings, antonyms, synonyms, creatives and exercises to do which we learn and then answer questions to. We practice a couple of them every night from our spellings and it’s good for learning a bit more from a different tense of a word. It makes us think of new words and how to put them into sentences. I used to love my Spiderwick essay from third class (there’s practically nothing else that I did that I liked besides this), because I managed to answer some questions at the back because I had a chance to.

2. Analysis of Sample Essays

Garrett goes on to explain that the remote, unspoiled beauty of the Aran Islands is synonymous with the Gaelic spirit. The Irish speakers of the Aran Islands could be thought of as representing something like that last fruit tree remaining from an orchard doomed to urban development. In yet another compelling image, Garrett refers to their unspoiled beauty as the shattered beauty of an impassioned, revolutionary mind. Read through the lens of Synge’s plays, this description is particularly evocative. The revolutionary element might well be a symbol for Synge’s artistic process, the unspoiled beauty that became a perfect image of the poet, perhaps on some level unconscious goal – a Synge poem come to life. Had Synge been a strictly cerebral artist, the characters drawn in conversation might have come across as stagey, self-conscious creatures – more interesting and more individualized than, say, the mannered caricatures of Oscar Wilde speak, but a far cry from the gritty, dramatic, authentic voice of Synge’s vision. In fact, some of the speeches in The Playboy of the Western World come perilously close at times to the overweening trope of the heroic self-contradictory soliloquy.

The first assigned reading in Elizabeth Garrett’s collection of poems, The Poem is You, is a piece called Of Revolution and Laughter. At the heart of this essay is the idea that Ireland’s own language and culture fell under the thrall of English rule, which reinforced the idea that the people of Ireland were inferior to the English in some unspecified way. Many other poets echoed this sentiment. Synge, however, was different. English by birth and upbringing, he nonetheless strove to write and speak in the language of the ordinary people of the Aran Islands. It would be no exaggeration to say that anyone interested in Synge and his work is conversant in the Irish language.

Essay 1:

The following essay takes a text from the poet Elizabeth Garrett and a text from the author J.J.M. Synge and discusses elements such as voice and imagery. They are from different time periods and have different styles. After this you could do Q.4 of the paper- discuss any two of the texts. You will have then done a great deal to prepare for the exam. So here are the two essays:

3. Writing Techniques

The two-punctuality thing applies here. If, at the beginning of a narrative, you cannot generate believable characters and settings from the outset, readers will not remain interested. Therefore, setting a proper background will allow your characters to stand stark in the foreground. Sucking the reader through the pages of a carefully structured memoir are the characters. Ensure that all the characters that appear in your narrative are necessary. The reader should finish your narrative with a feeling of satisfaction and a deeper understanding. Gain personal insight as a result of reading your narrative. Build your narrative in such a way that an emotional climax is reached. Ramp up, then ramp down. However, gratuitous or extreme emotionalism will cause readers to be buried in your narrative. The unsensational or matter.

Writing techniques. At the heart of a good narrative is the story. A story that has two things: a coherent structure and a sense of ‘what’s interesting and original.’ Structure depends on how you take the reader through the story. For example, an opening paragraph stating the mood or the scene is not interesting. It is much more interesting to plunge the reader straight into the action. A memoir is a slice of life. Do not spool off your life’s troubles and joy in minute detail. The essence of a good incident should excite the reader to read on. Realistic dialogue is a real skill. Badly written, it can sound disastrous. Expletives and dialect should only be used occasionally. Bad weather is advisable.

4. Tips for Improvement

2) Find which style suits you best. Often a mistake by students in their writing is that they fail to use the style of writing which does, in fact, suit the individual. They see a style that is liked by the examiner or the sample passage they have been examining and mistake this for their own skills. The result is an attempt at writing without any authority. The student believes he is not good enough. Look for your style of writing. It is important that you stay calm before writing that first paragraph. Read over the topics given carefully; this is planning time, necessary for the final result. Make sure to look at elements such as tone, perspective, and sentence structure. Consider each to suit the given topic. Look at bullet points, even close your eyes and plan a response to the possible titles. Be positive and make notes to have a number of phrases or keywords to begin each paragraph. Remember to keep an eye on exam guidelines in relation to the question set.

1) Write daily to improve vocabulary, expression, sentence structure, paragraphing, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It is important to proofread your writing after completing it. Mistakes will not be discovered at the end when you are under pressure just before the exam. Time will be lost when a memory of words which are correctly spelled and used instead. Mistakes may also lead to confusion for the person marking your paper. Write as much as possible to develop your style of writing and express your ideas clearly. Make sure you revise any work that you do regularly to maintain a long-term memory of phrases, grammar, and vocabulary to use in the written piece. Write on a wide range of issues, in a number of different formats such as a letter, explanation of a topic, answer to a question in a written journal.

5. Conclusion

The students are right to feel nervous. The present system, glorified by the establishment, has led to insecurity. This insecurity has led to us the “adjustment disorder” sufferers. If we dare to venture off course, or better still, refuse to sit the Leaving Certificate, we are lost forever. We are regarded as not quiet right, or, in other words, we have an “adjustment disorder”. The establishment likes to put the blame for exam phobia on the students and their parents. However, I believe that the majority of exam students are “stressed out” and scared of “making agents”. They dare not venture to step off course. The present state examination is seen as the only door to success and happiness. And so we have become afraid of the dark. A few people, who are academically bright or talented in sport or music can depend on getting through those narrow doors. For example conao11an-posed behind and have bans (either above or slipped away progression of our .slashes said Sean Browne; “It places so much emphasis on siles. It is a test, said Kevin Prunty it merits the which is very unfair. tribunal will ultimately have the linrohnJ the in giving greater authority more subject, around hygiene. and also matter. TheolmovlnC-put.ahren force hac only measures the hard knowing the subjects, who are puppstionsitTring a national Le all. it is obvious that few people are able to rise to the challe a test like the Leaving Certificate.

Good evening/morning afternoon and welcome to my speech on how the Leaving Cert Syllabus must be changed to reflect the world outside the exam hall. Have you ever heard of a story, called “Harrison Bergeron”, it was written by the former CBS newscaster, Kurt Vonnegut. If you haven’t read the story it is about a young intelligent boy, who lives in a future where “nobody is encouraged to be intelligent”. Anyway, the boy does some bad things and is arrested by a “Handicapper General”. This lady gives him and a ballerina some masking tape for their unwanted talents, makes his thoughts sloppy and makes everyone cry, for the boy, at his funeral. Everyone was crying, not because the boy was dead, but because he was smarter than anyone else. What a society! But surely that story is an exaggeration, a wild, crazy, science fiction, story. Perhaps not, according to the Chief Examiner’s Report 1998, one student, obviously inspired by his/her teacher said that the effect of the “modern educational system is the exact one described in Harrison Bergeron… ‘If everybody were equal… It was an age of equality'”. We spend 6 years in secondary school, only to come out the other end with “Adjustment Disorder” (another term used in the Chief Examiner’s Report 1998), rather than confidence.