LEAVING CERT GERMAN HIGHER AND ORDINARY LEVEL:JEDWARD POPPED up on yesterday's "undemanding" higher level Leaving Certificate German exam, in a letter acknowledging the popularity of the Lucan pair in Germany.

Apart from that slight celebrity splash, however, the paper was regarded as “straightforward” but “rather dull”.

None of the expected big ticket topics, such as the environment or the recession, came up although students would have had plenty of vocabulary to back up meatier issues, said Don Morgan of Monkstown CBC in Dublin.

“One teacher made the comment that the exam lacked variety in terms of themes and topics. One of the letters examined the experience of language learning. They would have done plenty of that over the course of the last two years. It’s a pity that some more challenging topics didn’t come up.” However, Mr Morgan said his students were “very happy” with the exam, especially the grammar section which covered material with which students would be familiar.

“It featured modal verbs and relative pronouns. They would have done those to death throughout the Leaving Cert cycle.

“Overall this was a very doable paper and students had a fair idea what was going to come up.”

The comprehension section was also described as “very simple”, especially a short story about a hairdressing appointment.

The German exam yesterday was taken by 7,500 students. It’s the second most popular elective language after French, although Spanish is rising in popularity and will hit almost 4,500 this year.

Yesterday’s ordinary level students were also “very happy” with their paper, which featured the topic of immigration.

“This was a fair paper and the students should have been well prepared for that topic,” said one teacher.