Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I remember the terror of being asked for the first time the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb, and I was coming from a language background and had a language degree - I had studied English and had done components of other languages as well. I am not at all sure that somebody who comes from, say, an engineering degree arrives with the required level of linguistic awareness. They may well do, they may well have had the devil and all of leaving certificate courses or they might be studying German in the Goethe-Institut and know all about modal verbs, inflected languages and so on. However, this is to take somebody with a basic level 7 qualification and give them one month to get to grips with the pedagogical nuts and bolts of running a classroom, running teaching and learning and going through the demonstrations and whatever terminology is to be used regarding the structure of those lessons. I find it difficult to stand over the idea that, within a month, they are going to have enough of a grasp of those grammatical structures, which is what teachers are delivering much of the time, to be able to effectively deliver on teaching and learning within the classroom.