Kathleen Funchion
Ceist:96. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education and Skills if knowledge of the conditional and future tenses in the German language is required for the junior certificate exam. [11006/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 6 March 2019
Ceisteanna (96, 97)
Kathleen Funchion
Ceist:97. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education and Skills if the genitive and dative cases and genitive and accusative prepositions in the German language are required for the junior certificate exam. [11007/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraFreagraí scríofa
I propose to take Questions Nos. 96 and 97 together.
While neither the genitive and dative cases nor genitive and accusative prepositions are directly targeted for assessment in the Junior Certificate Examination the integrated nature of the German language requires a receptive knowledge of same.
The examination is divided into three sections: for the first two sections i.e. the Listening Comprehension and the Reading Comprehension a receptive knowledge of these cases and prepositions is helpful though not essential as candidates are asked to extract meaning from the audio/reading text. Full and complete comprehension of each individual word and/or grammatical element within the text(s) is not necessary in order to extract meaning from the text. In the third section i.e. the Written Section students are asked to perform a number of communicative tasks from the syllabus. Students are free to express these communicative tasks in a more complex manner using, for example, more complex and elaborate grammatical structures which may require an active knowledge of genitive and dative cases and genitive and accusative prepositions. Equally, they are free to use shorter, simpler sentences.
It is important to state, however, that certain grammatical structures in the German language simply demand the use of genitive and dative (or indeed nominative and accusative) cases or genitive and accusative (or indeed nominative or dative) prepositions in order to express particular communicative tasks.
While knowledge of the future and conditional tenses is included in the syllabus for junior Certificate, they are not directly targeted for assessment in the listening and reading comprehensions.
However, in order to carry short communicative tasks in the written section of the examination paper, a knowledge of the future and conditional tenses may be required.