You only need an email address to access the course. The course is free of charge, and while you won’t get study credits from the course, I hope that it makes your stay in Cork more satisfying and rewarding. Enjoy the course and the city and university. I sincerely hope the course benefits you and hopefully you’ll continue with English and Irish language courses at the university.

Learning Outcomes

Overall Listening Comprehension
• Ss will be able to understand standard spoken language,
live or broadcast, on both familiar and unfamiliar topics
normally encountered in personal, social, academic or
vocational life. Only extreme background noise,
inadequate discourse structure and/or idiomatic usage
influences the ability to understand.
• Ss will be able to understand the main ideas of
propositionally and linguistically complex speech on
both concrete and abstract topics delivered in a standard
dialect, including technical discussions in his/her field of
specialisation. Can follow extended speech and complex
lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably
familiar, and the direction of the talk is sign-posted by
explicit markers.
Overall Reading Comprehension
Ss will be able to read with a large degree of
independence, adapting style and speed of reading to
different texts and purposes, and using appropriate
reference sources selectively. Has a broad active reading
vocabulary, but may experience some difficulty with low
frequency idioms.

Content and Language Integrated Learning
Outcomes
Time and chronology
• Ss will record information about people and events in the
past using simple timelines
• Ss will be able to use common words and phrases associated
with time such as BC, AD, age & Period, old/new, older/newer,
before/after, later/earlier, a long time ago, a very long time
ago, Stone Age, 600 BC, Early Christian Ireland, Ré na mBard,
Georgian period
Empathy
• Ss will imagine and discuss the feelings and motives of
people in the past.
Change and continuity
• Ss will develop an understanding of change and continuity
by exploring similarities and differences between the past and
the present
Cause and effect
• Ss will reflect upon the reasons for, and the effect of, some
events and changes in the past
Using evidence

• Ss will ask questions about a piece of evidence
• Ss will make simple deductions from, a single source of
evidence
Synthesis and communication
• Ss will select and organise historical information
• communicate this understanding of the past in a variety of
ways
Feasts and festivals in the past
• Ss will have become familiar with the origins and traditions
associated with some common festivals in Ireland and other
countries, for example, festivals associated with agricultural
practices festivals celebrated in ancient times.
Myths and legends
•Ss will have listened to and reflected upon a range of myths
and legends from cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds
in Ireland
Stories from the lives of people in the past
• Ss will have become aware of the lives of women, men and
children from different social, cultural, ethnic and religious
backgrounds, including the lives of ‘ordinary’ as well as ‘more
famous’ people
Life in Ireland Long Ago

• Ss will have become familiar with aspects of the lives of
these people
(homes of people,
clothes,
farming, foods and cooking
technologies which people developed and used
people at work
tools and weapons
language(s), culture, art and music leisure and pastimes
stories of individuals from this era)

The author’s CLIL-approach to language acquisition
Language acquisition is all about making the target language
comprehensible, that is, level-appropriate and engaging, and
therefore, understandable and enjoyable for learners. As
David Krashen pointed out; we acquire language when we
understand messages (or content, you might add). Well, in
this listening course, I aim to provide rich, engaging and
comprehensible content to learners by offering these talks
on the culture, history and art of the Emerald Isle. To this
end the talks are based on a presumed B2+ level, on various
aspects of the history, language, art, customs, folk tales,
music, flora and fauna, environment and geography of this
island nation we call home. As well as being an English
language teacher, and an Irish-speaker, I am fiercely proud
of the cultural heritage that we have and I am delighted to
share this with students. I have been studying Léann
Dúchais (Irish folklore, music and history) at NUI Galway
through the medium of Irish. All this gives me a unique
insight into subject. However, I am not a historian and am
taking a layperson’s approach to the subject. Finally, I am grateful to Isobel Ní Riain for kindly allowing us to use her forthcoming publication in the project.