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This paper describes a study of retention of school-acquired Irish among school leavers. The initial group selected represented final year secondary school students from three different instructional categories: ordinary level Irish, advanced level Irish and immersion school students. Participants were interviewed and their language skills assessed as they completed their study of Irish and again 18 months after they had left secondary school. Proficiency was measured in terms of scores on a communicative test of spoken Irish and a C-test in Irish. Background information collected included participants' self-assessed ability in spoken Irish, attitude/motivation in relation to learning Irish and their out-of-school use of Irish.
Test results did not indicate any attrition of Irish language skills over time, despite participants' general feelings of loss. This outcome matches findings from similar studies of second language attrition elsewhere, for example, Weltens, 1989. The results also indicated a general decline in opportunity to use Irish among participants from all three instructional backgrounds. The ex-immersion school participants, however, were the most likely to continue speaking the language. A small but significant gain on one particular Irish speaking subtest which was noted in this ex-immersion group may be attributed, in part at least, to these participants' greater access to Irish language-speaking networks.
