A reading comprehension about the use of emojis and a question on news consumption on Wednesday's higher-level English paper one gave Junior Cert students plenty to ponder.

However, students at Muckross Park College in Dublin were unanimous that it was a fair paper overall.

The hot topic was the reading comprehension about emojis based on an extract from an article by Adam Sternbergh called Smile, You're Speaking Emoji: The Rapid Evolution of a Wordless Tongue, which was first published in New York Magazine.

“Paper one had stuff about cartoons, emoji and lots of stuff on social media, which was cool. I wrote my essay about sibling rivalry, but the essay options were good this year and offered lots of variety,” said Muckross student Danielle O’Leary.

“I didn’t think the paper was that hard; it was quite fair. There’s no way to really prepare for most of paper one so it’s just what you can come up with on the day,” said Vanessa McDermott.

“ I wrote my essay on this guy who travelled to Alaska to live in a shipping crate,” Vanessa said.

“Neither of us ran out of paper but some girls were asking for more paper. I’m not sure what they were writing,” said Danielle.

Second-level teacher Luke Saunders, founder of Studyclix, said: “Again, as with the Leaving Cert English papers, it was clear the examiners were keen to make this year’s Junior Cert papers feel contemporary to the digital generation.

“The higher-level Junior Cert English paper featured an article that examined the popularity of emoji in modern communication and one question even asked students: ‘What are the advantages of using emoji in private text and emails?’

“This must have felt ironic to English teachers out there who often blame text-speak as major cause for our teens literacy and spelling deficiencies.

Media studies

The media studies section featured a question on news consumption habits, which the students said they found difficult as many of them do not read newspapers.

In one of the questions, students were asked to identify a news story that had captured their attention in the past 12 months.

They were also asked to look at an image depicting five types of news consumer and explain what type of news consumer they consider themselves to be.

Muckross student Sarah Dowley said the media studies part of paper one “was a bit hard but it was doable.

“There was a question on media consumption and the different types of people who read the news,” said Sarah.

“The options were pretty broad - it was a very fair paper,” said Sarah.

Aisling Hughes agreed the news consumption question was difficult, but said that once you read it a few times, it made sense.

“The reading comprehension was on emojis which was a bit odd, but maybe the people who made the exam are trying to be down with the kids,” said Aisling.

Sadhbh Potts, Clodagh Slattery, Erin O’Farrell and Molly O’Donovan agreed that the media section was the most difficult part of the paper.

The girls also thought that the emoji reading comprehension “didn’t work”.

“The media studies part was so hard. I don’t read the newspapers so it was a bit hard to think of what to say.

"We get most of our news from Facebook so we could come up with something but I was a bit nervous initially," said Sadhbh.