Gael Linn Radio Course

This week I am doing a radio course in Irish. Seeing as I have an interest in radio, I decided to do the Gael Linn broadcasting course. The week-long course is presented through Irish and takes place in the organisation's offices on Dame Street.

Naturally, I was a bit anxious going this on Monday. Meeting new people, learning new things, visiting new places - all in a different language! But my worries were just going astray. I was welcomed into Gael Linn by Martina, who asked me my name and where I was from. I waited till other students arrived and then headed upstairs where I was introduced to Daragh. Daragh was running the course. It was straight down to business, and we were told exactly what to expect over the next five days.

 In the morning, we went through a dictionary of Irish words that related to broadcasting. Daragh told us that this vocabulary would be essential throughout the rest of the week. We talked about different sources of news that newspapers used and watched the TG4 evening news.

After a short break we broke into groups where we wrote a press release.

On Tuesday, we split into groups and prepared our radio shows. We decided to do a show on teenage voting and if 16 year old's should have the right to vote. We then hit the streets and recorded a vox pop as gaeilge.

Wednesday was the day that we recorded our shows. At eleven, we went to the studios of Raidio na Life. Unfortunately, our main anchor presenter was sick. So, just in time, I had to stand in for her. We had a huge job re-writing the scripts and changing features. Nonetheless our show was recorded an hour later.

On Thursday, we started our second project. We started making our short film. We split into new groups and brainstormed. My group decided to make a modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet. We were each assigned characters and we began scripting the film.

Tomorrow, we will record the movie.