Reaction to 2026 Leaving Certificate Italian (Higher Level) by Erika Capello, Italian teacher at The Institute of Education.
- A tricky, specific approach to A.I. in schools was balanced with very student-friendly options.
- The compulsory sections will have challenged most students, while the sections with choice will have been very familiar to them.
When students saw A.I. as the subject for the Section A Reading Comprehension, many will have celebrated a little. However, as they read further, they discovered that this was a very challenging, teacher-centric take on the topic. The journalist passage is compulsory for all students and tries to reflect topics that are part of the world in which these young people live. While A.I. is schools is certainly a topic that they will be very aware of, this text focused on efforts by teachers to create a “Book in Progress AI” that predicts and adapts to students’ learning needs. This twist meant that students will have had to read the piece two or three times to make sense of it all. As a result the first two questions were quote tricky. While the third and fourth were copy and paste from the text, during the final question in English they would be strained to find a 4th insight. One of the pitfalls posed by task is timing: students could spend too long trying to interpret the text and find that they have lost an hour already.
This challenge is balanced by nice selection of literary passages in Section B. There was lots of choice in this section, and all of them were accessible. Students shouldn’t have struggled with any vocabulary in the unseen section from “Niente di vero”. For those who covered “Il treno dei bambini” the question on the narrator’s mother was perfect because she is such a big character throughout the piece. Even the essay section had ample choice. For example, those looking to answer on the differences between the north and south of Italy in Ardone’s book could cover family, economy or culture with ease. This was a nice balance after the tricky first comprehension.
Section C tasks students with writing three compositions. A.I. in schools appeared again in Q1, which is always based off the theme of the journalistic passage. Students will have prepared material on A.I. but the many will find the specificity of the school setting restrictive. Any of their material on A.I. and jobs or society as a whole could only tangentially be included. Even though they only had to cover three of the five talking points, some might struggle to have enough to say. One of the more unusual prompts was on would they like a robot teacher. I doubt that anyone will have prepared talking points for this, but if they adapted they could have reused material about teachers they connected with. For students who have more control over the language, this was an opportunity to inject some humour into their writing.
The two latter parts of Section C balance out this challenge with very student friendly options. The guided composition was based on travelling in Italy and mentioned “sciopero” (strike) and “gelato”, both pieces of vocabulary with which they should be familiar. Students then had a choice of either a writing a formal complaint or an application letter, both of which are common styles from the past papers. The complaint letter was based on the scenario of attending a language school and while it contained the need for past conditional, this would be familiar to anyone who practiced previous version. The application letter was for a volunteer position, a style very similar to the job application. These final pieces are worth 50 marks, that same as the first two Section C compositions combined, so students should feel very happy with how approachable this section was.
After a short a break the students returned to do the aural. Typically the pace and vocabulary of the pieces is accessible, but the marking schemes tend to be very strict, so students will really need to have been attentive to the details. As always the CD starts with a series of short ads with multiple choice questions. This was very manageable, but some might get caught out be “ananas” meaning pineapple and not as they may suspect bananas. After that the dialogues were clear pieces between two friends and included the familiar themes of free time, learning a language and the differences between Italy and Ireland. The final piece was an interview with an athlete on the importance of sport and the challenge of professional sports. After a trickier written paper, this aural will have been a nice finale to their Italian Leaving Certificate.