Everyone knows that to learn a new language it’s important to begin with its classical literature and poetry and ignore conversational skills
Also, what’s the point of learning the grammatical structures of our 1st language. There’s no way that knowledge is transferable and helpful in learning other languages
silentworm5 on
I dislike the framing of this article as ‘their needs are not being met’. Lord knows children nowadays have a myriad of needs that are not being met, and teachers are not even remotely qualified to meet some of these needs. Teachers spend most of their time just putting out fires and unfortunately some of the other aspects of the curriculum are let slide. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of Irish and what it represents culturally but can we please devote more attention to the fact that a vast proportion of the student body have unmet needs socially and emotionally, which needs to be fulfilled first if they are to learn anything.
ViceIsVerses on
DaithiMacG on
I’d love to see more comics and cartoons in Irish. My kids will reread their comics/ graphic novels multiple times. But the range of comics available is really small. Probably somewhere in the range of 80 comics in total, then when you factor in age appropriate, interest in topic or theme there are probably no more than 10 suitable comics the child be interested in.
Same with cartoons, there isn’t a wide selection. And what does exist is only available in a piecemeal fashion. For example my kids loved watching adventure time in Irish, but at any one stage there were never more than 3 episodes available to stream on TG4, and it could be weeks before the selection changed to another 3.
sureyouknowurself on
> it was shown that students lost motivation due to the emphasis on rote-learning and text books in Irish lessons
Chatted to a few Irish teachers and they also want it changed. No idea why it’s taking so long or who is resisting the change.
kosh_neranek on
Live in Wicklow. Not one single parent in my child’s class speaks Irish. All they remember from school is to ask to : “can i go to toilet?” The Irish parents moan about Irish all the time..they hate it
Been living here for 18 years now and the only Irish speakers I met are 3 posh C levels from last job and couple of C levels in my current job. Also was camping in Sligo once and came across Irish a few times while over there. Other than that – NOTHING.
Why on earth (other than pushing nationalism) is Irish being pushed now? The only dead language that ever made sense to learn is Latin.
I try to Irishnize myself as much as possible. Am not the foreigner who comes and doesn’t align with the nationals. This country is only successful because it speaks English. So seriously what the hell. This post is just pure nationalist propaganda.
Fact: most irish speakers live in china. ENYA was so popular there that a lot of them learnt the language…more than the irish themsleves. Teaching kids a dead language that si good for nothing is a waste of time. Teach them extra maths, programming, whatever so they stand a chance to the rest of the world.
CurrencyDesperate286 on
Saying you want to and actually learning are very different things.
Language learning is very tough outside of the natural development stage as a young child, and it takes a lot if motivation and work. Children, in any country, rarely become fluent or close to fluent through school alone – it takes a lot of independent learning. English proficiency is so strong in places like Northern Europe because children want/beed English for media and employment. The pull factors with Irish are a lot weaker, so it really is a challenge to try to get people to a high level.
There’s a huge disparity between the people who “want” to learn Irish and those who will put in the amount of work required.
SoloWingPixy88 on
Is Sealbhú not a research center aimed at trying to promote the Irish language? Seems like a bit of an issue in regards to bias and lack of independence. Feels like it would have been better to have an independent research group to do a study.
PoppedCork on
Their needs haven’t been met for as long as I remember
AdSpecialist4529 on
Gaeilgeoirs ike to say that the Irish language is really popular,citing proof in the big increase in Gaelscoils.
It’s funny how coincidental it is that these schools popped up while immigration to the country grew massively. Or maybe we started to love our language 🤔, a language i hear used maybe a couple of times a year.
BoxImpossible9011 on
Clearly my kids weren’t interviewed for this survey.
Faery818 on
Kids need their parents to speak it at home and to promote it and encourage it. School is where you learn it. The rest of the world is where you use it.
iamkengend on
I was working in a Gaelscoil before and I asked how come the new kids can pick the language up so quickly compared to say the mainstream schools and the principal was saying that obviously they speak it more often and that the way it is taught in mainstream schools is wrong. Too much emphasis on being correct instead of letting them learn how to converse in it, then the correction starts.
I don’t really remember much Irish and I definitely could not hold down a conversation. It’s almost shameful that many of us can’t speak our native language.
Inside_Ad_6312 on
This keeps coming up. My personal feelings are that students don’t have sufficient language input and are not doing their own work on it outside of class.
It is not possible to reach a b1/b2 standard in a language with 2 hours of class time a week for 6 months of the year from ages 12-17.
Those who want good grades are already behind when starting secondary and end up rote learning even when the poems are printed on the page and when having a basic conversation is worth 40%.
Students would fail the TEG exams though, they say they want to learn it like a foreign language but it’s obvious that they don’t have the time to put into it
NoBookkeeper6864 on
It was the same when I was in school, they are just bad at teaching Irish in Irish schools.
FollowingRare6247 on
All four of reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills are important. Not sure why I get the feeling of a dichotomy from the article. Ideally all should be practiced, I think; Irish phonology and idiom need practice, and are just different to English.
Fair play to the students for wanting to learn, and seeming to prefer active approaches that should help with speaking and listening. They’re practically muscle memory that can only be done with practice I think. I was more bookish and introverted though, so I’m biased towards the more boring shite, but the students have a point.
There’s a ton of mythology and folklore that could make reading and writing somewhat interesting. For all we have, I only remember Oisín i dTír na nÓg from secondary school. The Salmon of Knowledge and Setanta becoming Cú Chulainn were done through English in primary school for me. We had to study some poem about a lion in a cage, and a guy getting shot while getting Chinese for LC Irish – gloomy, even for me. Perhaps it changed? Changing what prose is studied and how grammar is done would probably improve things on the reading/writing front.
Hrohdvitnir on
I’ve always thought that a good course of action would be to make Irish lessons mandatory in school, but remove the obligation to sit an exam. I had a terrible irish teacher and I have a pitiful level of irish, barely passed the exam and was really put off irish. Fast forward a decade, and I’m now interested in learning again and wish there were better resources for it.
17 Comments
Everyone knows that to learn a new language it’s important to begin with its classical literature and poetry and ignore conversational skills
Also, what’s the point of learning the grammatical structures of our 1st language. There’s no way that knowledge is transferable and helpful in learning other languages
I dislike the framing of this article as ‘their needs are not being met’. Lord knows children nowadays have a myriad of needs that are not being met, and teachers are not even remotely qualified to meet some of these needs. Teachers spend most of their time just putting out fires and unfortunately some of the other aspects of the curriculum are let slide. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of Irish and what it represents culturally but can we please devote more attention to the fact that a vast proportion of the student body have unmet needs socially and emotionally, which needs to be fulfilled first if they are to learn anything.
I’d love to see more comics and cartoons in Irish. My kids will reread their comics/ graphic novels multiple times. But the range of comics available is really small. Probably somewhere in the range of 80 comics in total, then when you factor in age appropriate, interest in topic or theme there are probably no more than 10 suitable comics the child be interested in.
Same with cartoons, there isn’t a wide selection. And what does exist is only available in a piecemeal fashion. For example my kids loved watching adventure time in Irish, but at any one stage there were never more than 3 episodes available to stream on TG4, and it could be weeks before the selection changed to another 3.
> it was shown that students lost motivation due to the emphasis on rote-learning and text books in Irish lessons
Chatted to a few Irish teachers and they also want it changed. No idea why it’s taking so long or who is resisting the change.
Live in Wicklow. Not one single parent in my child’s class speaks Irish. All they remember from school is to ask to : “can i go to toilet?” The Irish parents moan about Irish all the time..they hate it
Been living here for 18 years now and the only Irish speakers I met are 3 posh C levels from last job and couple of C levels in my current job. Also was camping in Sligo once and came across Irish a few times while over there. Other than that – NOTHING.
Why on earth (other than pushing nationalism) is Irish being pushed now? The only dead language that ever made sense to learn is Latin.
I try to Irishnize myself as much as possible. Am not the foreigner who comes and doesn’t align with the nationals. This country is only successful because it speaks English. So seriously what the hell. This post is just pure nationalist propaganda.
Fact: most irish speakers live in china. ENYA was so popular there that a lot of them learnt the language…more than the irish themsleves. Teaching kids a dead language that si good for nothing is a waste of time. Teach them extra maths, programming, whatever so they stand a chance to the rest of the world.
Saying you want to and actually learning are very different things.
Language learning is very tough outside of the natural development stage as a young child, and it takes a lot if motivation and work. Children, in any country, rarely become fluent or close to fluent through school alone – it takes a lot of independent learning. English proficiency is so strong in places like Northern Europe because children want/beed English for media and employment. The pull factors with Irish are a lot weaker, so it really is a challenge to try to get people to a high level.
There’s a huge disparity between the people who “want” to learn Irish and those who will put in the amount of work required.
Is Sealbhú not a research center aimed at trying to promote the Irish language? Seems like a bit of an issue in regards to bias and lack of independence. Feels like it would have been better to have an independent research group to do a study.
Their needs haven’t been met for as long as I remember
Gaeilgeoirs ike to say that the Irish language is really popular,citing proof in the big increase in Gaelscoils.
It’s funny how coincidental it is that these schools popped up while immigration to the country grew massively. Or maybe we started to love our language 🤔, a language i hear used maybe a couple of times a year.
Clearly my kids weren’t interviewed for this survey.
Kids need their parents to speak it at home and to promote it and encourage it. School is where you learn it. The rest of the world is where you use it.
I was working in a Gaelscoil before and I asked how come the new kids can pick the language up so quickly compared to say the mainstream schools and the principal was saying that obviously they speak it more often and that the way it is taught in mainstream schools is wrong. Too much emphasis on being correct instead of letting them learn how to converse in it, then the correction starts.
I don’t really remember much Irish and I definitely could not hold down a conversation. It’s almost shameful that many of us can’t speak our native language.
This keeps coming up. My personal feelings are that students don’t have sufficient language input and are not doing their own work on it outside of class.
It is not possible to reach a b1/b2 standard in a language with 2 hours of class time a week for 6 months of the year from ages 12-17.
Those who want good grades are already behind when starting secondary and end up rote learning even when the poems are printed on the page and when having a basic conversation is worth 40%.
Students would fail the TEG exams though, they say they want to learn it like a foreign language but it’s obvious that they don’t have the time to put into it
It was the same when I was in school, they are just bad at teaching Irish in Irish schools.
All four of reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills are important. Not sure why I get the feeling of a dichotomy from the article. Ideally all should be practiced, I think; Irish phonology and idiom need practice, and are just different to English.
Fair play to the students for wanting to learn, and seeming to prefer active approaches that should help with speaking and listening. They’re practically muscle memory that can only be done with practice I think. I was more bookish and introverted though, so I’m biased towards the more boring shite, but the students have a point.
There’s a ton of mythology and folklore that could make reading and writing somewhat interesting. For all we have, I only remember Oisín i dTír na nÓg from secondary school. The Salmon of Knowledge and Setanta becoming Cú Chulainn were done through English in primary school for me. We had to study some poem about a lion in a cage, and a guy getting shot while getting Chinese for LC Irish – gloomy, even for me. Perhaps it changed? Changing what prose is studied and how grammar is done would probably improve things on the reading/writing front.
I’ve always thought that a good course of action would be to make Irish lessons mandatory in school, but remove the obligation to sit an exam. I had a terrible irish teacher and I have a pitiful level of irish, barely passed the exam and was really put off irish. Fast forward a decade, and I’m now interested in learning again and wish there were better resources for it.