Irish Society Writing Contest

The Irish Cultural Society announces its annual writing contest for students in the 9^th through 12^th grades in the Nassau County high schools.  The materials describing the contest have been mailed to the English Departments of the Nassau schools, public and private, and they have been posted on the Society’s web site.  

The writing project for the 2015 contest is built upon the English Regents Text-Analysis Response model.  The writers have to identify a main idea in a radio address given in 1943 by President of Ireland Eamon de Valera and to analyze the rhetorical devices he used, such as metaphor, parallelism and antithesis, to persuade his audience to adopt his proposal.  In the past the English Regents has used President John F. Kennedy’s First Inaugural Address for a Text-Analysis Response.   

The Society’s web site also contains “Helpful Hints,” suggestions to the contestants about how to approach the writing task.  The project itself is a task promoted by the new Common Core Curriculum.  Entries are due by March 17, 2015.

The Society has been sponsoring a writing contest for over thirty years.  This year thirty-nine prizes will be awarded from $200 to $35 at the Society’s May 6 Awards Ceremony at the Garden City Library.  Every entrant will receive a Certificate of Merit mailed to the student’s sponsoring teacher.  The library of the schools which have an entry into the contest will receive books on an Irish subject in appreciation of the role libraries play in promoting literacy.

 Any interested student can get copies of the materials for the contest in the English Department of the student’s school and on the web site, www.Irish-Society.org.