The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD, today [Monday] launched an interactive website to improve teaching and learning of spoken Irish in post-primary schools in a move backed by popular comedian Des Bishop.

Welcoming the annoucement, Senator James Carroll said “Abair Leat! is a virtual online language laboratory in which students can improve their Irish by interacting over the internet with native Irish speakers.”

“Students can use the website to listen to native Irish speakers, record their own material in Irish and undertake self-correcting exercises.”

Further aspects of the website are teachers can assess students’ work on the website and give spoken feedback online or written feedback by email.

The pilot phase of Abair Leat!, which will be rolled out in 14 post-primary schools initially, is aimed at supporting the oral syllabus in first year of post-primary school.

“The website encourages independent learning by allowing students to practise their oral Irish at home and in the classroom and it gives teachers the opportunity to assess them online. Des Bishop has generated significant goodwill for Irish and championed the cause of the language as a living part of the community”, Senator Carroll added.

“The proportion of marks for oral Irish in the Leaving Certificate examination will increase from 25pc to 40pc from 2012 so it is timely to examine new ways to improve students’ oral competency by leveraging the power of the internet.”

Des Bishop will now embark on a tour of a number of the pilot schools demonstrating Abair Leat! to students and teachers.

13 of the 14 schools are part of the Government’s €16 million high-speed wireless broadband plan.

It is expected that these schools will have wireless broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second before the Summer.

Abair Leat! is at www.abairleat.com