1. ENGLISH 4 LISTENING
EDUCATION
RODDY DOYLE
PRIMARY SCHOOL
FROM : FACE TO FACE, BBC2, TUESDAY 11 FEBRUARY 1997
Roddy Doyle was born in 1958. He attended St. Fintan's Christian Brothers School
in Sutton and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and continued his education at
University College, Dublin. He worked for fourteen years as an English and
Geography teacher at Greendale Community School, in Kilbarrack, North Dublin.
Since 1993 he has been dedicated to writing full-time. He is married to Belinda and
has two sons, Rory and Jack.
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1 Jeremy Isaacs: Where did you go to school?
2 Roddy Doyle: I went to a (1) p__________ school, a school called Scoil Assaim, St Assams school
3 in Raheny which was about a mile from where I lived. It was a big national school. There were 54 of
4 us in a (2) classroom and it was a fantastic school if I remember correctly. I wasn't aware of it at the
5 time but the (3) st__________ looking back on it now, were young, very (4) enthusiastic, very very
6 good teachers, you know, some of them (5) bri__________. And my (6) memories of that school are
7 very very good. I then, went on...
8 Jeremy Isaacs: Did you feel they were good teachers at the time?
9 Roddy Doyle: I liked them.
10 Jeremy Isaacs:: Did teachers seem important to you?
11 Roddy Doyle: I don't know. Probably, yes, they would have been key (7) f__________. I do
12 remember, I don't remember my first day (8) at school. I have a vague (9) n__________ of being (10)
13 dropped off somewhere and my mother (11) w__________ goodbye at me just sitting there. But as
14 (12) far as I remember I was blissfully (13) unaw__________ that I was in school for a while, you
15 know, and I think as my mother got down to the fact that I wasn't learning anything (14) at first, I was
16 just smiling up at the teacher but I hadn't a (15) c__________ how to read and my mother actually (16)
17 taught me how to read, you know. But later (17) __________, when I was 9, 10, 11 or 12, the teachers
18 I had then, I think they had a (18) huge impact on me. There was one man, a Mr Kennedy, Noel
19 Kennedy, he is the (19) h__________ of another (20) local school very close to where I am and I think
20 I was 10 or 11 when we wrote our first (21) e__________ and he (22) __________ us, you know, it
21 wasn't to be a story, it was to be descriptive. I can't remember the exact (23) s__________ but we were
22 to write a (24) paragraph and stop and I did and he read mine out and he praised it to the (25)
23 n__________ and to an extent that (26) praise has fed me ever since. I don't want to make too much of
24 it but it is one moment in my life where I felt incredibly (27) gr__________ to a teacher, you know.
25 And if I remember primary school, those moments were quite frequent. I didn't really encounter,
26 corporal (28) punishment existed, but I never encountered or witnessed brutality or very little of it in
27 that school. Now, when I went down to (29) s__________ school, to the Christian Brothers, it was a
28 different story. Probably, because I was older.