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Explaining humour

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Explaining humourOne of the things that children taking Common Entrance exams at either 11+ or 13+ find most difficult to explain is humour. Here’s a quick guide to various different types with explanations, examples and a short quiz at the end.

Slapstick comedy or farce

This is a type of physical comedy that relies on the fact that we find it funny when other people hurt themselves. It’s called ‘Schadenfreude’ in German, and it really shouldn’t be funny…but it is!

Example: A man slips on a banana skin and falls over.

Deadpan or dry humour

This is any joke that’s told with a very matter-of-fact tone.

Example: “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport’.”
The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams

Self-deprecation

This means putting oneself down in a self-mocking way.

Example: “If a book about failures doesn’t sell, is it a success?”
Jerry Seinfeld

Toilet and bodily humour

What we do in the toilet or in the bedroom has given rise to a LOT of jokes over the years…

Example: “It’s just a penis, right? Probably no worse for you than smoking.”
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris

Puns, wit and wordplay

These are jokes based on double meanings or a play on words.

Example: “If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse

Epigrams

An epigram is just a saying, and some sayings can be very funny – whether deliberately or not!

Example: “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
Yogi Berra

Dark humour

Dark humour is usually about death or the gloomier aspects of life.

Example: I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.”
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, by Bill Bryson

Sarcasm and irony

Sarcasm is saying exactly the opposite of what you mean, but irony is much richer and more popular because the meaning for the reader can be anything from the literal truth of the statement to its exact opposite. It’s up to you…

Example: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Innuendo

Finding a rude double meaning in a word or phrase is called innuendo.

Example: “Headline?” he asked.
“‘Swing Set Needs Home,'” I said.
“‘Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'” he said.
“‘Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'” I said.”
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Tongue-in-cheek

This expression just means the writer or speaker is being insincere in an ironic and/or mocking way.

Example: “In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Exaggeration and hyperbole

Exaggeration can lead to a powerful punchline in a joke because it relies on shocking the reader with something unexpected.

Example: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean

Parody and mockery

Pretending to write in a certain style or copying the format of a particular writer or type of text can be done humorously – although the implied criticism may be affectionate.

Example: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen

Satire

This is making fun of something usually in religion, politics or current affairs.

Example: “They say the world is flat and supported on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle.”
The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett

The surreal

‘Surreal’ just means absurd, nightmarish or like a fantasy.

Example: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

Character humour

Like a lot of sit-coms this form of humour relies on the personality of the characters. Things are funny because they are so typical of a certain type of person – often a stereotype.

Example: “As a boy, I wanted to be a train.”
Machine Man, by Max Barry

Observational

A lot of stand-up comedy is based on observational humour, which means simply picking up on the typical habits of people in the world around us. We laugh because we recognise the behaviour and often the reason for it.

Example: “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”
Matilda, by Roald Dahl

Insults

The shock value of an insult lends itself to humour.

Example: Two whales walk into a bar. The first whale says to the other, “WOOOOOO. WEEEEEEEEOOOOO. WEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOO.” The second whale says, “Shut up Steve, you’re drunk.”

Awkward situations

If a situation is particularly cringeworthy or awkward, then it will often generate nervous laughter.

Example: “I don’t know how other men feel about their wives walking out on them, but I helped mine pack.”
Breaking Up, by Bill Manville

Blue or off-colour jokes

Using rude words or swear words has the shock value that can generate humour.

Example: “If this typewriter can’t do it, then f*** it, it can’t be done.”
Still Life With Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins

Sample questions

How would you explain the humour in these lines?

  1. “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
    Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen
  2. “There’s a door,” he whispered.
    “Where does it go?”
    “It stays where it is, I think,” said Rincewind.
    Eric, by Terry Pratchett
  3. “It’s not because I want to make out with her.”
    “Hold on.”
    He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he’d just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me.
    “I just did some calculations, and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of s**t.”
    Looking for Alaska, by John Green
  4. “I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn’t a professional: the knife had butter on it.”
    Rodney Dangerfield
  5. “A word to the wise ain’t necessary. It’s the stupid ones who need advice.”
    Bill Cosby
  6. “To win back my youth, Gerald, there is nothing I wouldn’t do – except take exercise, get up early or be a useful member of the community.”
    A Woman of No Importance, by Oscar Wilde
  7. “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major, it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction, he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
    Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
  8. “Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
    Jingo, by Terry Pratchett
  9. “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'”
    “The mood will pass, sir.”
    The Code of the Woosters, by PG Wodehouse
  10. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
    The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by CS Lewis
  11. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
    I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
  12. “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
    Dorothy Parker
  13. “For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
  14. “For the better part of my childhood, my professional aspirations were simple – I wanted to be an intergalactic princess.”
    Seven Up, by Janet Evanovich
  15. “It wasn’t until I had become engaged to Miss Piano that I began avoiding her.”
    Into Your Tent I’ll Creep, by Peter De Vries
  16. “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
    The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Long multiplication

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You can use short multiplication if you’re multiplying one number by another that’s in your times tables (up to 12). However, if you want to multiply by a higher number, you need to use long multiplication.

  • Write down the numbers one on top of the other with the smaller number on the bottom and a times sign on the left (just as you would normally), then draw three lines underneath to hold three rows of numbers.
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  • Multiply the top number by the last digit of the bottom number as you would normally.
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  • Write a zero at the end of the next answer line (to show that you’re multiplying by tens now rather than units).
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  • Multiply the top number by the next digit of the bottom number, starting to the left of the zero you’ve just added.
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  • Add the two answer lines together to get the final answer.
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Notes:

  • Some people write the tens they’ve carried right at the top of the sum, but that can get very confusing with three lines of answers!
  • Don’t forget to add the zero to the second line of your answer. If it helps, you can try writing it down as soon as you set out the sum (and before you’ve even worked anything out).
  • At 11+ level, long multiplication will generally be a three-digit number multiplied by a two-digit number, but the method will work for any two numbers, so don’t worry. If you have to multiply two three-digit numbers, say, you’ll just have to add another line to your answer.

Sample questions:

Have a go at these questions. Make sure you show your working – just as you’d have to do in an exam.

  1. 216 x 43
  2. 17 x 423
  3. 23 x 648
  4. 782 x 28
  5. 127 x 92

Who or whom, who’s or whose?

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The ‘W’ words are useful if you’re trying to understand or summarise a story, but who, whom, who’s and whose tend to cause problems. Here’s a quick guide to what they all mean and how they can be used.

Who v whom

Who and whom are both relative pronouns, which mean they relate to the person you’ve just been talking about. Note that they don’t relate to animals or things, just people. The difference is just one letter, but it signals that one of them stands for the subject (in the nominative case if you’ve ever done Latin) while the other stands for the object (in the accusative).

  • The subject of a sentence is the noun or pronoun that controls the verb, in other words the person or thing that’s ‘doing the doing’.
  • The object of a sentence is the noun or pronoun that is suffering the action the verb, in other words the person or thing that’s having something done to it.

For example, in the following sentence, ‘the girl’ is the subject, and ‘the boy’ is the object:

The girl tapped the boy on the shoulder.

We could also use pronouns, in which case ‘she’ is the subject, and ‘him’ is the object.

She tapped him on the shoulder.

Note that we use ‘him’ rather than ‘he’ in this case. That tells us that the boy is the object and not the subject. It’s the same with ‘who’ and ‘whom’. In fact, it’s the same letter – the letter ‘m’ – that tells us that ‘him’ and ‘whom’ are both the objects of the sentence, and that might be a good way to remember the difference.

For example, in the following sentence, ‘the girl’ is still the subject, so we use ‘who’:

They saw the girl who had tapped the boy on the shoulder.

In the next sentence, the boy is still the object, so we use ‘whom’:

They saw the boy whom the girl had tapped on the shoulder.

Note that neither who nor whom needs a comma before it in these cases. That’s because we are defining which people we’re talking about. It’s a bit like ‘which’ and ‘that’: ‘which’ describes things and needs a comma, but ‘that’ defines things and doesn’t. If we already know who people are and simply want to describe them, then we do use a comma.

They saw Patricia Smith, who had tapped the boy on the shoulder.

They saw Paul Jones, whom the girl had tapped on the shoulder.

In these cases, we know who the children are – Patricia and Paul – so all we’re doing is describing something that has happened. There is only one Patricia Smith and one Paul Jones, so we don’t need to define them. That means we need to use a comma in both cases.

I hope that all makes sense. Here are a few practice questions. Just decide in each case whether you should use ‘who’ or ‘whom’.

  1. They talked to Jim, who/whom lived in Stoke.
  2. He played football with the boy who/whom had red hair.
  3. She was friends with the girl who/whom played volleyball.
  4. Who/whom do you think will win the egg and spoon race?
  5. Who/whom did they put in prison?

Who’s v whose

The words ‘who’s’ and ‘whose’ are homophones, which is another way of saying they sound the same but mean completely different things. ‘Who’s’ is short for ‘who is’ or ‘who has’ while ‘whose’ is a possessive pronoun that means ‘of whom the’ or ‘of which the’. For example, take these two sentences:

  • Who’s going to the cinema tonight?
  • He was a big man whose hands were larger than dinner plates.

The first means ‘Who is going to the cinema tonight?’ whereas the second means ‘He was a big man of whom the hands were larger than dinner plates’. The only reason we don’t say those things is that they’re a bit of a mouthful, so it’s easier to use ‘who’s’ or ‘whose’.

I hope that’s clear now. Here are a few practice questions. Just decide in each case whether you should use ‘who’s’ or ‘whose’.

  1. Who’s/whose in charge of the tennis rackets?
  2. Who’s/whose bag is this?
  3. He speaks to the woman who’s/whose behind the counter.
  4. She likes him to know who’s/whose boss.
  5. Who’s/whose been eating all the crisps?

Homophones

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Homophones are words that sound the same even though they’re spelt differently and mean different things. Getting them right can be tricky, but it’s worth it in the end.

The reason why homophones are important is not just to do with the general need to spell correctly. Many people think getting them wrong is a ‘worse’ mistake than simply mis-spelling a word because it means that you don’t really know what you’re doing. Anyone can make a spelling mistake, but using completely the wrong word somehow seems a lot worse. That may not sound fair, but that’s just how a lot of people think, so it’s worth learning the common homophones so you don’t get caught out.

Here’s a list of the main ones:

SpellingsMeanings
a lot/allotmuch/distribute
ad/addnotice/put together
ads/adds/adzenotices/puts together/type of axe
aid/aidehelp/assistant
ail/aletrouble (verb)/beer
air/heiratmospheric gas/inheritor
aisle/isle/I’llcorridor/island/I will
all ready/alreadyeverything set/by a certain time
all together/altogethereveryone in the same place/absolutely
all/awltotally/piercing tool
allowed/aloudpermitted/out loud
alter/altarchange/church table
ant/auntinsect/parent’s sister or brother’s wife
arc/arkpart of circle/Biblical boat
assent/ascentagreement/rise
assistance/assistantshelp/helper
ate/eightconsumed/8
aural/oralto do with hearing/to do with mouths
away/aweighoff/up (eg anchors aweigh)
ay/aye/eye/Iyes/yes/organ of sight/1st person
bail/balescoop water out/jump out
bait/batefood on hook/hold (eg bated breath)
ball/bawlsphere/
band/bannedgroup/illegal
bard/barredpoet/banned
bare/bearnaked/tolerate or grizzly
baron/barrenlord/arid
base/bassfoundation/low note
be/beeexist/flying insect
beach/beechsandy area/type of tree
beat/beethit/beetroot
beau/bowmale admirer/bend down or front
bell/bellemusical instrument/pretty girl
berry/buryfruit/inter
berth/birthsleeping place/arrival of baby
billed/buildinvoiced/construct
bite/bytenibble/unit of data
blew/blueforced air/colour
bloc/blockgroup of countries/cuboid
boar/borewild pig/boring person
board/boredflat object/weary
boarder/borderlodger/edge
bode/bowedimply/curved
bolder/boulderbraver/rock
born/bornecreated/tolerated
bough/bowbranch/bend down or front of ship
boy/buoymale child/floating marker
brake/breakslow down/shatter
breach/breechgap/part of gun
bread/bredfood made with yeast/brought up
brewed/broodfermented/family
brews/bruiseferments/scar
bridle/bridalleather strap/to do with brides
broach/broochopen (a question)/piece of jewellery
browse/browslook through/hair above the eyes
but/buttalthough/water tank
buy/by/byepurchase/by means of/goodbye
cache/cashhidden hoard/notes and coins
callous/callusheartless/blister
cannon/canongun/collection of artistic works
canvas/canvasssail fabric/ask questions of
capital/capitolupper case or city/government building
carat/carrot/caret/karatweight/vegetable/arrow/share of gold
carol/carrelsong/cubicle
cast/castethrown/social class
cede/seedgive up/reproductive unit
ceiling/sealingroof/making watertight
cell/sellpart of body/exchange for money
cellar/sellerbasement/person selling
censor/sensorban (film etc)/measurement device
cent/scent/sentUS penny/perfume/dispatched
cents/scentsUS pennies/perfumes
cereal/serialbreakfast dish/TV show
cession/sessiongiving up/period of course
chance/chantsluck/songs
chased/chastepursued/like a virgin
cheap/cheepinexpensive/bird sound
chews/choosenibbles/select
chilly/chillicold/hot food
choir/quiregroup of singers/unit of paper
chord/cordgroup of notes/string
chute/shootdisposal passage/take shot at goal
cite/sight/sitequote/seeing/location
clause/clawsparagraph/talons
coarse/courserough/track or route
colonel/kernelarmy rank/stone in fruit
complement/complimentgo well with/say something nice
coo/coupsound of dove/revolution
core/corpscentre/army unit
correspondence/correspondentsletters/letter-writers
council/counselgoverning body/advice
councillor/counsellorgovernor/advisor
creak/creekwhine/stream
crews/cruiseteams/voyage
cue/queuesnooker tool/line of people waiting
currant/currentdried fruit/electric flow
cymbal/symbolmusical instrument/icon
dam/damnriver barrier/damnation
days/daze24-hour periods/confuse
dear/deerexpensive/type of mammal
defused/diffusedmade safe/circulated
desert/dessertsandy zone/pudding
dew/do/duewater on grass/finish/owed
die/dyeexpire/colour (verb)
discreet/discretenot talkative/separate
doe/dough/dohfemale dear/unbaked bread/oh, no
done/dunfinished/grey-brown
draft/draughtpractise writing/on tap (eg beer)
dual/duelin two parts/fight with swords etc
earn/urn/ern or ernemake money/vase/type of bird
ewe/you/yewfemale sheep/2nd person/type of tree
faint/feintlose consciousness/fake attack
fair/farejust/food
fated/feteddestined/celebrated
faun/fawnrural god/beige or young deer
faze/phase disturb/stage
feat/feetachievement/plural of foot
find/finedseek/told to pay money
fir/furtype of tree/animal hide
flair/flaretalent/bullet making bright light
flea/fleetype of insect/run away
flew/flu/fluepast tense of fly/influenza/chimney
flocks/phloxherds/type of plant
flour/floweringredient for bread/plant
for/four/foreto the benefit of/4/in front
fort/fortecastle/speciality
forth/fourthforwards/4th
foul/fowldisgusting/birds
friar/fryer monk/pan
gait/gateway of walking/door outside
gene/jeanDNA unit/trousers
gild/guildcover in gold/organisation
gilt/guiltcovered in gold/having done wrong
gored/gourdholed/fruit or water container
gorilla/guerrillatype of ape/freedom fighter
grate/greatfireplace/grand
grease/Greecelubrication/a country
groan/grownmoan/past tense of grow
guessed/guestpast tense of guess/invitee
hail/halecelebrate/healthy
hair/harestrands growing on head/rabbit
hall/haulroom/pull
hangar/hangerstorage for aircraft/hook in wardrobe
hay/heydried grass/oy
heal/heel/he’llmake well/back of foot/he will
hear/herelisten/in this place
heard/herdpast tense of hear/group of animals
heed/he’dpay attention to/he would or he had
hertz/hurtsfrequency unit/causes pain
hew/hue/Hughcut/colour/a name
hi/highhello/raised
higher/hiremore raised/rent
him/hymna pronoun/religious song
hoard/hordecollection/mass of people
hoarse/horserough (of voices)/an animal
hoes/hosegarden tools/tube
hold/holedkeep or carry/past tense of hole
hole/wholespace/entire
holey/holy/whollywith holes/sacred/completely
hour/our60 minutes/a pronoun
humorous/humerusfunny/arm bone
idle/idollazy/religious statue
illicit/elicitillegal/draw out
in/inninside/hotel
instance/instantsexample/moments
intense/intentsfierce/purposes
it’s/itsit is/belonging to it
jam/jambfruit spread/door frame
kernel/colonelcore/army rank
knap/napcrest/doze
knead/kneed/needmix dough/hit with knee/require
knight/nightwarrior/dark time
knit/nitfit together/egg of louse
knot/nottied rope/negative
know/no/Nohbe aware of/negative/type of drama
knows/noseis aware of/facial feature
laid/ladepast tense of lay/load ship
lain/lanepast participle of lay/alley
lay/leiplace/flower necklace
leach/leechleak/blood-sucking worm
lead/ledheavy metal/past tense of lead
leak/leekdrop out/vegetable
leased/leastpast tense of lease/superlative of less
lee/leashadow of wind/meadow
lessen/lessonmake less/teaching session
levee/levyembankment/tax
liar/lyreperson who lies/musical instrument
license/licencepermit (verb)/permission
lichen/likenmould/compare
lie/lyefalsehood/alkali solution
links/lynxconnections/wild cat
load/lodeput into/vein of metal in ground
loan/lonelending/single
locks/loxsecures/smoked salmon (American)
loot/lutemoney/musical instrument
made/maidcreated/young woman
mail/malepost/masculine
main/mane/Mainechief/hair/state in USA
maize/mazecorn/labyrinth
manner/manorway/lord’s house
mantel/mantlementalpiece/coat
marshal/martialarmy rank/to do with war
massed/mastbrought together/upright post on ship
maybe/may beperhaps/might be
meat/meet/metetype of food/get together/distribute
medal/meddleaward/interfere
metal/mettleshiny material/spirit
might/mitemay/tiny spider
mince/mintsground beef/plural of mint
mind/minedbrain/dug up
miner/minor/mynahdigger/junior/type of bird
missed/mistpast tense of miss/fog
moan/mowngroan/past participle of mow
mode/mowedway/past tense of mow
moose/mousseelk/foam
morn/mournmorning/regret
muscle/musselpart of body/sea creature
mustard/musteredspicy dressing/broughted together
naval/navelto do with the navy/belly button
nay/neighno (dated)/sound of horse
none/nunnot one/female monk
oar/or/oreblade/alternatively/metal source
ode/owedpoem/due
oh/owe/oah/have a debt of/oh (poetic)
overseas/overseesforeign/manages
pail/palebucket/faint
pain/paneache/window panel
pair/pare/pearcouple/shave/type of fruit
palate/palette/palletpart of mouth/artist’s tray/platform
passed/pastpast tense of pass/in the past
patience/patientstolerance/people in hospital
pause/pawsbreak/animal hands and feet
pea/peevegetable/urinate
peace/pieceharmony/bit
peak/peek/piquesummit/look quickly/annoyance
peal/peelsound of bells/take skin off
pearl/purlprecious stone/knitting stitch
pedal/peddlefoot lever/sell
pedalled/peddledcycled/sold
peer/pierlook carefully/jetty
per/purrfor each/sound of a cat
pi/pie3.14/dish topped with pastry
plain/planeunexciting/2D object
pleas/pleaserequests (noun)/if it pleases you
plum/plumbtype of fruit/measure water depth
pole/pollrod/election or survey
pore/pourconcentrate on/flow
practice/practiserehearsal/rehearse
pray/preytalk to God/victim
presence/presentsbeing somewhere/gifts
prince/printsson of monarch/printed photographs
principal/principlemain/rule of conduct
profit/prophetmoney made/religious seer
rack/wrackwire tray/shipwreck
rain/reign/reinwater from clouds/rule/control strap
raise/rays/razelift/plural of ray/destroy
rap/wraphit/pack up (eg a present)
rapped/rapt/wrappedpast tense of rap/spellbound/past tense of wrap
read/redpast tense of read/scarlet
read/reedstudy/type of plant
real/reelgenuine/cylinder for fishing line etc
reek/wreaksmell bad/cause
rest/wrestrelax/wrench away
retch/wretchvomit/poor soul
review/revuelook over/stage performance
right/rite/writecorrect/ritual/form Leopardtters
ring/wringsound of bell/squeeze out water
road/rode/rowedstreet/past tense of ride/past tense of row
roe/rowfemale deer/use oars
role/rollpart in play/type of bread
root/routepart of plant/roads to take
rose/rowstype of flower/tiers
rote/wroterepetition/past tense of write
rough/ruffcoarse/Elizabethan collar
rung/wrungpast tense of ring/squeezed water out
rye/wrycereal plant/mocking
sail/salecanvas propulsion/selling
scene/seensituation/past tense of see
scull/skullrow alone/head of skeleton
sea/seeocean/be aware of
seam/seemsewn connection/appear
seas/sees/seizeoceans/is aware of/grab
serf/surfagricultural worker/waves
sew/so/sowconnect with thread/thus/plant
shear/sheercut/complete
shoe/shoofootwear/chase away
side/sighededge/past tense of sigh
sighs/sizebreathes out/dimensions
slay/sleighkill/sled
sleight/slightdeceptive skill/faint
soar/sorerise/painful
soared/swordpast tense of soar/bladed weapon
sole/soulonly/spirit
some/suma few/total
son/sunmale child/star in the sky
staid/stayedunadventurous/past tense of stay
stair/starestep/look hard
stake/steakwooden post/joint of meat
stationary/stationerymotionless/writing materials
steal/steelrun off with/metal compound
step/steppestair/European plains
stile/stylefence steps/manner
straight/straitnot bending/narrow strip of water
suite/sweethotel rooms/sugary
summary/summerybrief account/to do with summer
surge/sergerush/type of cloth
tacks/taxnails/levy
tail/taleback end/story
taught/tautpast tense of teach/tight
tea/teemeal/golf ball holder
team/teemgroup of players/swarm
tear/tierteardrop/row
tern/turntype of bird/go round a corner
their/there/they’rebelonging to them/in that direction/they are
theirs/there’sthe one belonging to them/there is
threw/throughpast tense of throw/in and out of
thrown/thronepast participle of throw/royal chair
thyme/timetype of herb/progress of days or years
tic/tickhabit/mark (if correct)
tide/tiedflow of water/past tense of tie
to/too/twotowards/as well/2
toad/towedfrog/past tense of tow
toe/towpart of foot/pull
told/tolledpast tense of tell/rang
trussed/trustbound (with rope)/belief
vain/vane/veinproud/fin/artery
vale/veilvalley/lace face covering (for brides etc)
vial/viletest tube/evil
wade/weighedwalk in water/past tense of weigh
wail/whalehowl/type of ocean mammal
waist/wastemiddle of body/use carelessly
wait/weightdelay or stay/mass
waive/wavegive up/breaker
ware/wear/wherepottery/put on clothes/which place
way/weigh/wheymanner/measure weight/part of milk
ways/weighsmanners/measures weight
we/weepronoun/urination or little
weak/weekfeeble/seven days
weather/whetherclimatic conditions/if
we’d/weedwe would or we had/unwanted plant
we’ll/wheelwe will or we shall/round component
wet/whetliquid/sharpen
we’ve/weavewe have/make cloth
which/witchpronoun/wizard
while/wileas/ruse or cunning plan
whine/winewhimper/alcoholic grape drink
who’s/whosewho is or who has/of whom the
wood/wouldtree material/conditional marker
yoke/yolkpart of plough/yellow part of egg
yore/your/you’reformer times/belonging to you/you are
you’ll/Yuleyou will or you shall/Christmas

French regular verbs – present subjunctive tense

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French verbs

“I hate French!”

The subjunctive in French is generally used in the present tense after expressions such as ‘il faut que’ and some verbs that also take the word ‘que’ after them. These are generally the ones that express feelings or doubts (eg vouloir and craindre), especially when two parts of a sentence have different subjects, eg ‘I want her to be happy’ becomes ‘Je veux qu’elle soit contente’. Verbs ending in -er or -re have one set of endings, but  -ir verbs have another (shown here in red):

Verbs ending in -er, eg donner (to give)

Je donne

Tu donnes

Il/elle donne

Nous donnions

Vous donniez

Ils/elles donnent

Verbs ending in -re, eg vendre (to sell)

Je vende

Tu vendes

Il/elle vende

Nous vendions

Vous vendiez

Ils/elles vendent

Verbs ending in -ir, eg finir (to finish)

Je finisse

Tu finisses

Il/elle finisse

Nous finissions

Vous finissiez

Ils/elles finissent

Circle theorems

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This article explains circle theorems, including tangents, sectors, angles and proofs (with thanks to Revision Maths).

Isosceles Triangle

Two Radii and a chord make an isosceles triangle.

Perpendicular Chord Bisection

The perpendicular from the centre of a circle to a chord will always bisect the chord (split it into two equal lengths).

Angles Subtended on the Same Arc

Angles subtended on the same arc

Angles formed from two points on the circumference are equal to other angles, in the same arc, formed from those two points.

Angle in a Semi-Circle

angle in a semi-circle

Angles formed by drawing lines from the ends of the diameter of a circle to its circumference form a right angle. So c is a right angle.

Proof

We can split the triangle in two by drawing a line from the centre of the circle to the point on the circumference our triangle touches.

Divide the triangle in two

We know that each of the lines which is a radius of the circle (the green lines) are the same length. Therefore each of the two triangles is isosceles and has a pair of equal angles.

Two isosceles triangles

But all of these angles together must add up to 180°, since they are the angles of the original big triangle.

Therefore x + y + x + y = 180, in other words 2(x + y) = 180.
and so x + y = 90. But x + y is the size of the angle we wanted to find.

Tangents

A tangent to a circle is a straight line which touches the circle at only one point (so it does not cross the circle- it just touches it).

A tangent to a circle forms a right angle with the circle’s radius, at the point of contact of the tangent.

angle with a tangent

Also, if two tangents are drawn on a circle and they cross, the lengths of the two tangents (from the point where they touch the circle to the point where they cross) will be the same.

Tangents from an external point are equal in length

Angle at the Centre

Angle at the centre

The angle formed at the centre of the circle by lines originating from two points on the circle’s circumference is double the angle formed on the circumference of the circle by lines originating from the same points. i.e. a = 2b.

Proof

You might have to be able to prove this fact:

proof diagram 1

OA = OX since both of these are equal to the radius of the circle. The triangle AOX is therefore isosceles and so ∠OXA = a
Similarly, ∠OXB = b

proof diagram 2

Since the angles in a triangle add up to 180, we know that ∠XOA = 180 – 2a
Similarly, ∠BOX = 180 – 2b
Since the angles around a point add up to 360, we have that ∠AOB = 360 – ∠XOA – ∠BOX
= 360 – (180 – 2a) – (180 – 2b)
= 2a + 2b = 2(a + b) = 2 ∠AXB

Alternate Segment Theorem

Alternate segment theorem

This diagram shows the alternate segment theorem. In short, the red angles are equal to each other and the green angles are equal to each other.

Proof

You may have to be able to prove the alternate segment theorem:

proof of alternate segment theorem

We use facts about related angles

A tangent makes an angle of 90 degrees with the radius of a circle, so we know that ∠OAC + x = 90.
The angle in a semi-circle is 90, so ∠BCA = 90.
The angles in a triangle add up to 180, so ∠BCA + ∠OAC + y = 180
Therefore 90 + ∠OAC + y = 180 and so ∠OAC + y = 90
But OAC + x = 90, so ∠OAC + x = ∠OAC + y
Hence x = y

Cyclic Quadrilaterals

A cyclic quadrilateral is a four-sided figure in a circle, with each vertex (corner) of the quadrilateral touching the circumference of the circle. The opposite angles of such a quadrilateral add up to 180 degrees.

Area of Sector and Arc Length

A sector

If the radius of the circle is r,
Area of sector = πr2 × A/360
Arc length = 2πr × A/360

In other words, area of sector = area of circle × A/360
arc length = circumference of circle × A/360

Creating off-the-shelf characters

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Common entrance exams have a time limit. If they didn’t, they’d be a lot easier! If you want to save time and improve your story, one thing you can do is to prepare three ‘off-the-shelf’ characters that you can choose from. You can work on them beforehand, improving them and memorising them as you go. By the time the exam comes around, it’ll be easy to dash off 8-10 lines about one of your favourite characters without having to spend any time inventing or perfecting them.

Here’s what you need to do.

The first thing to say is that you need your characters to be a little out of the ordinary. Most pupils writing stories tend to write about themselves. In other words, 10-year-old boys living in London tend to write stories about 10-year-old boys living in London! Now, that’s all very well, and the story might still get a good mark, but what you want to try and do is stand out from the crowd. Why not write a story about an 18-year-old intern at a shark research institute in the Maldives?! To decide which one you’d rather write about, you just have to ask yourself which one you’d rather read about. One thing you can do to make sure your characters are special is to give them all what I call a ‘speciality’ or USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It might be a superpower such as X-ray vision or mind-reading, or it might be a special skill such as diving or surfing, or it might be a fascinating back-story such as being descended from the Russian royal family or William Shakespeare – whatever it is, it’s a great way to make your characters – and therefore your stories – just that little bit more interesting.

Secondly, ou should also make sure all your characters are different. Try to cover all the bases so that you have one you can use for just about any story. That means having heroes that are male and female, old and young with different looks, personalities and nationalities. For instance, Clara might be the 18-year-old intern at a shark research institute in the Maldives, Pedro might be the 35-year-old Mexican spy during the Texas Revolution of 1835-6 and Kurt might be the 60-year-old Swiss inventor who lives in a laboratory buried deep under the Matterhorn! Who knows? It’s entirely up to you.

Thirdly, creating an off-the-shelf character is a great way to force yourself to use ‘wow words’ and literary techniques such as metaphors and similes. You may have learned what a simile is, but it’s very easy to forget to use them in your stories, so why not describe one of your heroes as having ‘eyes as dark as a murderer’s soul’? If you use the same characters with similar descriptions over and over again, it’ll become second nature to ‘show off’ your knowledge, and you can do the same with your vocabulary. Again, why say that someone is ‘big’ when you can say he is ‘athletic’, ‘brawny’ or ‘muscular’?

Fourthly, try to stick to what you know. If you’ve never even ridden on a horse, it’s going to be quite tough to write a story about a jockey! Alternatively, if you’ve regularly been to a particular place on holiday or met someone you found especially interesting, then use what you know to create your characters and their backgrounds. It’s always easier to describe places if you’ve actually been there, and it’s easier to describe people if you know someone similar.

So what goes into creating off-the-shelf characters? The answer is that you have to try and paint a complete picture. It has to cover every major aspect of their lives – even if you can’t remember all the details when you come to write the story. I’d start by using the following categories:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Job or education
  • Looks
  • Home
  • Friends and family
  • Personality
  • USP (or speciality)

Names are sometimes hard to decide on, so you might want to leave this one to last, but you just need to make sure it’s appropriate to the sort of character you’re creating. It wouldn’t be very convincing to have a Japanese scientist called Emily!

Age is fairly easy to decide. Just make sure your three characters are different – and not too close to your own age!

Job or education goes a long way to pigeon-holing someone. You can tell a lot from what someone does for a living or what they are doing in school or at university. You can include as much or as little detail as you like, but the minimum is probably the name and location of the school or college and what your characters’ favourite subjects are. You never know when it might come in handy!

Looks includes hair, eye colour, build, skin colour and favourite clothes. The more you describe your heroes’ looks, the easier it’ll be for the reader to imagine them.

Home can again be as detailed as you like, but the more specific the better. It’s easier to imagine the captain of a nuclear submarine patrolling under the North Pole than someone simply ‘living in London’…

Friends and family are important to most people, and it’s no different for the heroes of your stories. We don’t need to know the names of all their aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, but we at least need to know who they live with and who their best friends are.

Personality covers many things, but it should show what your characters are ‘like’ and what their interests are. Again, you don’t have to go into enormous depth, but it’s good to introduce the reader to qualities that might be needed later on in the story, such as athleticism or an ability to sail a boat.

USP (or speciality) covers anything that makes a character worth reading about. One of the reasons Superman is so popular is his super powers: his ability to fly, his X-ray vision and the fact that he’s invulnerable. His greatest weakness is also important: Kryptonite. It’s the same for your characters. What can they do that most people can’t? What qualities can they show off in your stories? What will make them people we admire, respect and even love?

Once you’ve created the notes for your three characters, you can write a paragraph of 8-10 lines about each of them. This is your chance to create something that you can easily slot into any of your stories, so use the past tense and stick to what the characters are like, not what they’re doing. That will be different in each story, so you don’t want to tie yourself down.

Try using your characters for stories you’re asked to write by your English teacher (or tutor, if you have one). The more often you use them, the better they’ll get as you change things you don’t like about them, bring in new ideas and polish the wording.

Long division

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Long division is on the syllabus for both 11+ and 13+ exams, so it’s important to know when and how to do it.

The basic idea is that it’s tricky to do short division when the number you’re dividing by (the ‘divisor’) is outside your times tables, ie more than 12. Using long division makes it easier by including a way of calculating the remainder using a proper subtraction sum. It also makes it neater because you don’t have to try and squeeze two-digit remainders in between the digits underneath the answer line (the ‘dividend’).

So how does it work? Well, the only difference involves the remainder. In normal short division, you work it out in your head and put it above and to the left of the next digit in the dividend. In long division, you work out the multiple of the divisor, write it down under the dividend and subtract one from the other to get the remainder. You then pull down the next digit of the dividend and put it on the end of the remainder, repeating as necessary.

To take the example at the top of the page, what is 522 divided by 18?

  1. How many 18s in 5?
  2. It doesn’t go
  3. How many 18s in 52?
  4. Two (write 2 on the answer line, and write 36 under the dividend with a line beneath it)
  5. What’s 52 – 36?
  6. 16 (write it on the next line)
  7. Pull down the next digit from the dividend (write it after the 16)
  8. How many 18s in 162?
  9. Nine (write it on the answer line, giving 29 as the answer, or ‘quotient’)

That’s the basic method, but here are a couple of tips to help you out.

The first is that you can make life easier for yourself by guessing round numbers. Working with numbers outside your times tables is tricky, so you can use ‘trial and error’ to come up with the right multiple of the divisor by trying ‘easy’ ones like 5 or 10. If it’s too big or too small, you can simply try again with a smaller or bigger number.

The second is that you can often divide the divisor by two to force it back into your times tables. Why divide by 18 when you can simply divide by nine and halve the result? You just have to be careful that you only deal in even multiples, eg 52 ÷ 18 is tricky, but the nearest even multiple of 9 is 4 (as 5 is an odd number and 6 x 9 = 54, which is too much), so the answer must be 4.

How to write a letter

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Writing a letter is not as easy as it might seem – especially if you have to do it during a Common Entrance exam! In this post, I’d like to explain the typical format of formal and casual letters and the decisions on wording that you’ll have to make.

First of all, here’s a quick list of the main parts of a letter that the examiner will be looking at:

  • Sender’s address
  • Date
  • Greeting
  • Text
  • Sign-off
  • Signature

Sender’s address

It’s important to put the address of the sender (not the recipient!) at the top right of the letter (see above). The postman obviously doesn’t look inside the letter, so the address of the recipient needs to go on the envelope instead! The only exception is if it’s a business letter intended to be posted in a window envelope. In that case, it needs to have the recipient’s address positioned above the sender’s address at just the right height so that it shows through the window when an A4 sheet is folded in three.

The address should really be aligned right, so you must remember to leave enough space for yourself when you start writing each line. Otherwise, it’ll look a bit of a mess…

Date

The date should be placed two or three lines below the sender’s address (again aligned right) in the traditional long format rather than just in numbers, eg 7th October 2018 rather than 7/10/18 (or 10/7/18 if you’re American!).

Greeting

Which greeting you use depends on the recipient. If you know the name of the person you’re writing to, then you should use ‘Dear’ rather than ‘To’, eg ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley’. ‘To’ is fine for Christmas cards, but not for letters. You should also put a comma afterwards. If you’re writing to a company or an organisation and you don’t know the name of the person, you have two options: you can either start the letter off with ‘Dear sir/madam’ or write ‘To whom it may concern’. This works better when it’s a reference for a job or a formal letter that may be circulated among several people.

Text

The text can obviously be whatever you like, but make sure you start it underneath the comma after the greeting. You should also use paragraphs if the letter is more than a few lines.

Sign-off

The sign-off is just the phrase you put at the end of the letter before your signature. If the letter is to a friend or relative, there aren’t really any rules. You can say anything from ‘Love’ to ‘Best regards’ or ‘Yours ever’. Note that they all start with a capital letter and should be followed by a comma. If the letter is to someone else, the sign-off depends on the greeting: if you’ve used someone’s name in the greeting, you should use ‘Yours sincerely’, but it’s ‘Yours faithfully’ if you haven’t.

Signature

The signature is very important in letter-writing as it’s a simple way of ‘proving’ who you are, so you should develop one that you’re happy with. It should include your first name or your initial(s) plus your surname, eg Nick Dale or N Dale or NW Dale. Your signature should be special, so it doesn’t need to be ‘neat’ or ‘clear’ like the rest of the letter. In fact, the prettier and the more stylish, the better!

And there you have it. This is only one way of writing a letter, and there are other ways of formatting the information, but these rules will at least give you the best chance of getting full marks in your Common Entrance exam!

Maths trick

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maths trick

Here’s a Maths trick a friend of mine saw on QI. Who knows? It might make addition and subtraction just a little bit more fun!

  1. Find a book and write down the ninth word on p108, eg ‘becoming’.
  2. Ask someone to write down a number with three different digits in it, eg 321.
  3. Ask him to reverse it and take the smaller number away from the larger, eg 321 – 123 = 198.
  4. Ask him to write down the answer and, again, reverse it, eg 891.
  5. Ask him to add the two new numbers together, eg 198 + 891 = 1089.
  6. Ask him to find the ninth word on p108 of the book, eg ‘becoming’.
  7. Reveal the same word you wrote down earlier!

The trick is that the answer is always going to be 1089, whatever the number you first think of, so it should work every time – unless there’s a problem with the Maths!

Simultaneous equations

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Simultaneous equations help you work out two variables at once.

download

Why do we have simultaneous equations? Well, there are two ways of looking at it.

  1. The first is that it solves a problem that seems insoluble: how do you work out two variables at once? For example, if x + y = 10, what are x and y? That’s an impossible question because x and y could literally be anything. If x was 2, then y would be 8, but if x was 100, then y would be -90, but if x was 0.5, then y would be 9.5 and so on. Simultaneous equations help us solve that problem by providing more data. Yes, we still can’t solve each equation individually, but having both of them allows us to solve for one variable and then the other.
  2. The second way of looking at simultaneous equations is to imagine that they describe two lines that meet. The x and y values are obviously different as you move along both lines, but they are identical at the point where they meet, and that is the answer to the question.

The next question is obviously ‘How do we solve simultaneous equations?’ The answer is simple in theory: you just have to add both equations together to eliminate one of the variables, at which point you can work out the second one and then put it back into one of the original equations to work out the first variable. However, it gets more and more complicated as the numbers get less and less ‘convenient’, so let’s take three examples to illustrate the three different techniques you need to know.

Simple addition and subtraction

The first step in solving simultaneous equations is to try and eliminate one of the variables by adding or subtracting them, but you can only do that if the number of the variable is the same in both. In theory, you could choose the first or the second term, but I find the one in the middle is the easiest, eg

4x + 2y = 10

16x – 2y = 10

Here, the number of the variables in the middle of the equations is the same, so adding them together will make them disappear:

20x = 20

It’s then simple to divide both sides by 20 to work out x:

x = 1

Once you have one variable, you can simply plug it back into one of the original equations to work out the other one, eg

4x + 2y = 10

4 x 1 + 2y = 10

4 + 2y = 10

2y = 6

y = 3

Answer: x = 1, y = 3

Multiplying one equation

If the number of variables in the middle is not the same, but one is a factor of the other, try multiplying one equation by whatever number is needed to make the number of the variables match, eg

4x + 2y = 10

7x + y = 10

Multiplying the second equation by 2 means the number of the y’s is the same:

4x + 2y = 10

14x + 2y = 20

The rest of the procedure is exactly the same, only this time we have to subtract rather than add the equations to begin with:

10x = 10

x = 1

The next part is exactly the same as the first example as we simply plug in x to find y:

4x + 2y = 10

4 x 1 + 2y = 10

4 + 2y = 10

2y = 6

y = 3

Answer: x = 1, y = 3

Multiplying both equations

If the number of variables in the middle is not the same, but neither is a factor of the other, find the lowest common multiple and multiply the two equations by whatever numbers are needed to reach it, eg

4x + 2y = 10

x + 3y = 10

The lowest common multiple of 2 and 3 is 6, which means we need to multiply the first equation by 3:

12x + 6y = 30

…and the second by 2:

2x + 6y = 20

As the number of variables in the middle is now the same, we can carry on as before by subtracting one from the other in order to find x:

10x = 10

x = 1

Again, the final part of the technique is exactly the same as we plug x into the first of the original equations:

4x + 2y = 10

4 x 1 + 2y = 10

4 + 2y = 10

2y = 6

y = 3

Answer: x = 1, y = 3

Practice questions

Job done! Now, here are a few practice questions to help you learn the rules. Find x and y in the following pairs of simultaneous equations:

  1. 2x + 4y = 16
    4x – 4y = 8
  2. 3x + 2y = 12
    5x + 2y = 16
  3. 12x – 4y = 28
    3x – 2y = 5
  4. 2x – y = 12
    3x – 2y = 17
  5. 4x + 3y = 24
    5x – 2y = 7
  6. 4x + 3y = 31
    5x + 4y = 40
  7. x + 4y = 23
    5x – 2y = 5
  8. 4x + 3y = 37
    2x – 3y = -13
  9. 2x + 4y = 16
    3x – 5y = -9
  10. 2x + 4y = 20
    3x + 3y = 21

How to become a private tutor

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Adrian-Beckett_09032013_035

I’ve talked to a few people who wanted to become private tutors, so I thought I’d write down a few tips for anyone who’s interested.

How did I start out?

I started as a private tutor quite by accident. It was 2009, and I was finding it hard to get work as a freelance management consultant when I happened to read an article in the Telegraph called 10 Ways to Beat the Recession. The author mentioned a few ways of earning some extra cash, including becoming an extra on film sets – which I was already doing – and working as a private tutor. I’d never done any proper teaching before, although I was a golf coach, and I’d coached skiing a few times in the Alps, but I thought I’d sign up with a couple of agencies and see what happened. Within a week, I had two clients, and I’ve never looked back since!

What qualifications do I need?

The first and most important thing to say is that you don’t need any teaching qualifications! Yes, that’s right. You don’t need a PGCE, and you don’t need to have done any training as a teacher. As a private tutor, you are just that – private – so you don’t have to jump through all the Government hoops that a teacher in a state school would have to do. Obviously, potential clients want the best person to teach their child, so you need to show some sort of academic record, but that can be as little as a degree in English – which is what I had when I started. Admittedly, I went to Oxford, which probably counts for a lot with Russian billionaires (!), but you don’t need to have an Oxbridge degree to become a tutor. Far from it. However, what you probably will need is a criminal records check. This is just a piece of paper that certifies you haven’t been convicted of a criminal offence and was often known as a ‘CRB check’, although it’s now officially called an Enhanced Certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service, or ‘DBS check’. You can’t apply for an ‘enhanced certificate’ yourself, but your tuition agency can help you. In fact, they may require you to have one and even to renew it every year or two. It costs around £18 and can take up to three months to arrive, so it’s worth applying as early as possible. Some agencies may charge up to £80 to make the application on your behalf, so be careful! You can find further information here.

What subjects can I teach?

You can teach whatever you like! Agencies will just ask you which subjects you offer and at what level, so you have complete freedom to choose. I focus on English and Maths, which are the most popular subjects, but that’s mostly led by demand from clients. They are the main subjects at 11+ level, so that’s what most people are looking for help with.

What age children can I teach?

Again, the choice is yours. I’ve taught students from as young as five to as old as 75, but the peak demand is at 11+ level, when the children are around 10 years old. I make it a rule that I’ll only teach a subject to a level that I’ve reached myself, such as GCSE or A-level, but clients sometimes take you by surprise. When I turned up to teach what I thought was going to be English to two boys, the nanny suddenly asked me to do Latin instead. When I said I hadn’t done any Latin since I was 15, she just said, “Oh, you’ll be fine…!”

What preparation do I need to do?

  • Research. One of the big attractions of tutoring for me is that the work is very enjoyable. I like teaching, and I like spending time with children, so it’s the perfect combination! The reason I stopped work as a management consultant was the constant stress, the persistent worry that I wasn’t up to the job, but teaching 10-year-olds never makes me feel like that. Whether it’s English or Maths, I’m confident in my ability to teach and never worry about being asked an impossible question. However, that doesn’t mean you can walk into your first lesson without doing any preparation at all. In my case, I wanted to teach English, so I needed to find out what kind of questions cropped up in 11+ and 13+ entrance exams and come up with a good method of answering them. Once I’d done that, I was ready. Maths was a bit easier, but I still looked through a few papers to make sure there was no risk of being blind-sided by something I’d forgotten how to do or had never studied. Whatever the subject you’re offering, I suggest you do the same.
  • Past papers. The other thing I needed to do was to find past papers to give to my pupils. That was a bit tricky in the early days until a kind parent gave me a collection of photocopied exams. After that, I carried a couple around with me to take to lessons, but it wasn’t a great solution, so I decided to create a website – this one. Over time, I collected dozens of past papers and wrote various articles on how to do different kinds of question in Maths, English and French. Now, I don’t have to carry around anything with me or spend time dictating notes. I can simply ask my pupils to look it up online. Setting up a website is pretty easy using WordPress or something similar, but you should feel free to use the resources on my past papers tab if you don’t want to go to the trouble yourself, and all my articles are available for free if you need them. The main ones I use for English are about doing comprehensions and writing stories, but there are plenty more. The website proved unexpectedly popular, and I had over 28,000 visitors last year! The other advantage is that it generated enough business for me not to need agencies any more. That means I can charge what I like, I don’t have to pay any commission, and I can have a direct relationship with all my clients without anybody acting as an intermediary – and often just getting in the way!
  • Business cards. I know it sounds a bit old-fashioned, but having business cards is very useful. If you’re just starting out, nobody knows your name, so paying a few quid to market your services is one of the best investments you can make. You never know when people will tell you they’re looking for a tutor, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to give them a business card. Even if you don’t have a website, it will at least tell them how to reach you, and you should get a lot more clients out of it.

How can I find work?

Tuition agencies are the best place to start, but there are different kinds. Some are online and simply require you to fill out a form for them to check and vet, but others ask you to go through an interview, either over the phone or in person. Either way, you need to put together a tailored CV that shows off your academic achievements and highlights any teaching experience you’ve had. This may not be very much at the beginning, but you simply need to show enough potential to get you through the door. Once you’ve shown enough aptitude and commitment to get accepted by a few agencies, you’ll rapidly build up your experience on the job.

Here is a list of the tuition agencies I’ve been in touch with, together with contact details where available. I’m based in London, so there is obviously a geographical bias there, but some of the agencies such as Fleet Tutors offer national coverage, and you can always search online for others in your local area.

Name

Email

Telephone

Website
A-Star Tuition astartuition@btinternet.com 01772 814739 astartuition.com
Approved Tutors approvedtutors.co.uk
Athena Tuition athenatuition.co.uk/
Beacon Tutors info@beacontutors.co.uk 020 8983 2158 beacontutors.co.uk/
Bespoke Tuition emma@bespoketuition.com 07732 371880 bespoketuition.com
Bigfoot Tutors tutors@bigfoottutors.com 020 7729 9004 bigfoottutors.com
Bright Young Things 07702 019194 brightyoungthingstuition.co.uk
Dulwich Tutors info@dulwichtutors.com 020 8653 3502 dulwichtutors.com
Enjoy Education kate@enjoyeducation.co.uk enjoyeducation.co.uk
Exam Confidence
First Tutors firsttutors.co.uk
Fleet Tutors 0845 644 5452 fleet-tutors.co.uk
Gabbitas gabbitas.com
Greater London Tutors 020 7727 5599 greaterlondontutors.com
Harrison Allen harrisonallen.co.uk
Holland Park Tuition recruitment@hollandparktuition.com 020 7034 0800 hollandparktuition.com
IPS Tutors info@ipstutors.co.uk 01509 265623 ipstutors.co.uk
Ivy Education ivyeducation.co.uk
Kensington & Chelsea Tutors tutors@kctutors.co.uk 020 7584 7987 kctutors.co.uk
Keystone Tutors enquiries@keystonetutors.com 020 7351 5908 keystonetutors.com
Kings Tutors emily@kingstutors.co.uk kingstutors.co.uk
Knightsbridge Tutors 07890 521390 knightsbridgetutors.co.uk
Laidlaw Education laidlaweducation.co.uk
Mentor & Sons andrei@mentorandsons.com 07861 680377 mentorandsons.com
Osborne Cawkwell enquiries@oc-ec.com 020 7584 5355 oc-ec.com
Personal Tutors admin@personal-tutor.co.uk personal-tutors.co.uk
Russell Education Group joe@russelleducationgroup.com n/a
Search Tutors searchtutors.co.uk
Select My Tutor info@selectmytutor.co.uk selectmytutor.co.uk
SGA Education s@sga-education.com sga-education.com
Simply Learning Tuition simplylearningtuition.co.uk
The Tutor Pages thetutorpages.com
Top Tutors 020 8349 2148 toptutors.co.uk
Tutor House info@tutorhouse.co.uk 020 7381 6253 tutorhouse.co.uk/
Tutor Hunt tutorhunt.com
Tutorfair tutorfair.com
Tutors International tutors-international.net
UK Tutors uktutors.com
Westminster Tutors exams@westminstertutors.co.uk 020 7584 1288 westminstertutors.co.uk
William Clarence Education steve@williamclarence.com 020 7412 8988 williamclarence.com
Winterwood  winterwoodtutors.co.uk

That’s obviously a long list, but, to give you an idea, I earned the most from Adrian Beckett (teacher training), Bespoke Tuition, Bonas MacFarlane, Harrison Allen, Keystone Tutors, Mentor & Sons, Personal Tutors and Shawcross Bligh.

Once you’ve been accepted by and started working for a few agencies, you’ll soon see the differences. Some offer higher rates, some the option to set your own rates, some provide a lot of work, some offer the best prospects of jobs abroad. It all depends what you’re looking for.

Where will the lessons take place?

When I first started tutoring, I had to cycle to all my clients. I put a limit of half an hour on my travel time, but it still took a lot of time and effort to get to my pupils. Fortunately, I’m now able to teach at my home, either in person or online using Skype and an electronic whiteboard, which means my effective hourly rate has gone up enormously. Travel is still a little bit of a problem for most tutors, though, and I certainly couldn’t have reached my pupils without having a bicycle. I didn’t have a car, and public transport wasn’t really an option in most cases. You just have to decide how far you’re prepared to go: the further it is, the more business you’ll get, but the longer it’ll take to get there and therefore the lower your effective hourly rate.

The other possibility, of course, is teaching abroad. I’ve been lucky enough to go on teaching assignments in Belarus, Greece, Hong Kong, Kenya, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey, and it’s a great way to see the world. The clients can sometimes be a little bit difficult, and the children can sometimes behave like spoiled brats (!), but staying with a great client in a sunny getaway overseas can be a wonderful experience. The only reason I don’t apply for more foreign postings is that I don’t want to let down my existing clients – going away for three weeks just before the 11+ exams in January would NOT go down well!

When will the lessons take place?

If you’re teaching children, lessons will usually be in the after-school slot between 1600 and 2000 or at weekends. That does limit the amount of hours you can teach, but it’s up to you how much you want to work. I used to work seven days a week, but I eventually gave myself a day off and then another, so I now work Sundays to Thursdays with Friday and Saturday off. During the holidays, you lose a lot of regular clients when they disappear to the Maldives or somewhere for six weeks (!), but others might ask for an intensive sequence of lessons to take advantage of the extra time available, and there’s obviously a greater chance of a foreign assignment. All that means that the work is very seasonal, so you should expect your earnings to go up and down a bit and plan your finances accordingly.

What should I do during the lesson?

I generally teach from past papers, so I ask pupils to do a past paper for their homework and then mark it during the following lesson. ‘Marking’ means marking the questions, obviously, but it also means ‘filling in the gaps’ in the pupil’s knowledge. If he or she is obviously struggling with something, it’s worth spending a few minutes explaining the topic and asking a few practice questions. I’ve written a few articles on common problem areas in English and Maths, such as commas and negative numbers, so I often go through one of those and ask the pupil’s parents to print it out and put it in a binder. After a few weeks, that collection of notes gradually turns into a ready-made revision guide for the exams.

If the parents want you to work on specific topics, that’s also possible. For example, one mother wanted to help her son with ratios, so she printed out dozens of past papers and circled the ratio questions for him to do. He soon got the knack!

I approach English in a slightly different way to begin with. There are two types of question in the 11+, comprehensions and creative writing, so I generally spend the first lesson teaching pupils how to do one of those. I go through my article on the subject online and then ask them to answer a practice question by following the procedure I’ve outlined. They usually finish it off for their homework. After a few weeks of stories or comprehensions, I’ll switch to the other topic and do the same with that. I also ask pupils to write down any new words or words they get wrong in a vocabulary book because building vocabulary is very important for any type of English exam (and also for Verbal Reasoning). I ask them to fold the pages over in the middle so that they can put the words on the left and the meanings on the right (if necessary). Every few weeks, I can then give them a spelling test. If they can spell the words correctly and tell me what they mean, they can tick them off in their vocab book. Once they’ve ticked off a whole page of words, they can tick that off, too! I usually try to reinforce the learning of words by asking pupils to tell me a story using as many words as possible from their spelling test. It can be a familiar fairy story or something they make up, but it just helps to move the words from the ‘passive’ memory to the ‘active memory’, meaning that they actually know how to use them themselves rather than just understand them when they see them on the page.

What homework should I set?

Most children who have private lessons have pretty busy schedules, so I don’t want to overburden them. I generally set one exercise that takes around 30-45 minutes. That might be a Maths paper or an English comprehension or story, but it obviously depends on the subject and the level. Just make sure that the student writes down what needs to be done – a lot of them forget! You should also make a note in your diary yourself, just so that you can check at the start of the next lesson if the work has been done.

What feedback should I give the parents?

I generally have a quick chat with the mother or father (or nanny) after the lesson to report on what we did during the lesson, what problems the child had and what homework I’ve set. This is also a good time to make any changes to the schedule, for instance if the family goes on holiday. If that’s not possible, I’ll email the client with a ‘lesson report’. Some agencies such as Bonas MacFarlane make this a part of their timesheet system.

How much will I get paid?

When I first started, I had absolutely no idea how much I was worth, and I ended up charging only £10 an hour, which is not much more than I pay my cleaner! Fortunately, a horrified friend pointed out that it should be ‘at least’ £35 an hour, and I upped my rates immediately. I now charge £60 an hour for private lessons, whether online or in person. Unfortunately, some agencies such as Fleet Tutors don’t allow you to set your own rates, so that’s one thing to bear in mind when deciding which agencies to work with. However, they did provide me with quite a bit of work when I first started, so it’s swings and roundabouts. The pay scale often varies depending on the age of the student and the level taught, so you’ll probably earn more for teaching older students at GCSE level or above if the agency sets the prices. If you have any private clients, you can obviously set whatever rate you like, depending on where you live, the age of your pupils, whether lessons are online or in person and so on. Personally, I only have one rate (although I used to charge an extra £5 for teaching two pupils at the same time), and I raise it by £5 every year to allow for inflation and extra demand. Tutoring is more and more popular than ever these days, and I read somewhere that over half of pupils in London have private lessons over the course of their school careers, so don’t sell yourself short! You should be able to make around £25,000 a year, which is not bad going for a couple of hours’ work a day!

Foreign jobs are a little different, and there is a ‘standard’ rate of around £800 a week including expenses. That means your flights and accommodation are all covered, and you can even earn a bit more on the side if you decide to rent out your home on Airbnb while you’re away! When it comes to day-to-day expenses such as taxis and food and drink, it’s important to negotiate that with the agency before accepting the job. It’s no good complaining about having to live in the client’s house and buy your own lunches when you’re in Moscow or Bratislava! It can be a dream job, but just make sure you look at it from every angle:

  • What subjects will I be teaching?
  • How many hours will I have to teach?
  • How many days off will I get per week?
  • Where will the lessons take place?
  • How do I get to and from my accommodation?
  • How long is the assignment? (I refuse anything more than three months.)
  • Where will I be staying? (NEVER at the client’s house!)
  • How old are the children?
  • Will I have any other responsibilities (eg ferrying the children to and from school)?
  • Do I need a visa?
  • What is the weekly rate?
  • What expenses are included (eg flights, accommodation, taxis, food, drink)?

How do I get paid?

Most agencies ask for a timesheet and pay their tutors monthly via BACS payments directly into their bank accounts. That’s a bit annoying from a cash flow point of view, but there’s not much you can do about it – other than using a different agency. When it comes to private clients, I generally ask for cash after the lesson, but it’s even more convenient if they can pay via standing order – as long as you can trust them! I once let a client rack up over £600 in fees because he tended to pay in big lump sums every few weeks, but then his business folded, and I had to use a Government website to try and chase him up. Fortunately, his wife saw the email and paid my bill, but it took months to sort out. Normally, though, the worst that happens is that a client just doesn’t have the right change and promises to pay the following week, so you just need to keep track of who owes what.

I hope all this helps. Good luck!

 

Rules of composition

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As everyone knows, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” – but that doesn’t stop me trying to do both!

Whatever kind of photographer you are and whatever kind of pictures you take, you always need to pay attention to composition. As an introductory guide (or a reminder), here are a few principles of composition to help you take better pictures. Just make sure you break all of them once in a while!

Rule of thirds

The most common rule in photography is the rule of thirds. The aim of the game here is avoid taking pictures that are too symmetrical. For some reason, the human eye doesn’t like that, so it’s usually best to place the subject off-centre. The rule of thirds is just one way to do that. Others include the golden ratio or the Fibonacci curve, and you can find them in Lightroom if you really want to, but the rule of thirds is the best and the simplest. The idea is that you imagine that the viewfinder is divided up into thirds – both horizontally and vertically – and place the subject at the intersection of two of those invisible lines in order to give it more impact. The lines also help you to place the horizon when you’re taking a landscape shot. If the horizon is in the middle of the frame, it looks a bit static. Instead, try to establish whether most of the interest is in the land or the sky. If you want people to focus on the land, place the horizon on the lower imaginary line; if you want people to focus on the clouds in the sky, place it on the upper one. Just make sure that it’s straight!

Moth on a daisy
‘The Decisive Moment’

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered a master of candid photography. He pioneered the genre of street photography. The Decisive Moment was the title of a book he wrote, and his idea was that timing is the secret of a good photograph. This is obviously more important in certain types of photography (such as wildlife) than others (such as landscape), but it is still a useful guide to taking any kind of action shot.

Bear about to catch salmon in mouth


Framing

Every photograph obviously has a frame, but have you ever tried using a ‘frame-within-a-frame’? Photographic frames come in all shapes and sizes, and so do the ones you find in real life. It might be the branches of a tree or a doorway or a window – the point is that it adds depth to a picture and focuses the viewer’s attention.

Tuscany 1


Negative space

I don’t know why people call it ‘negative space’ rather than just ‘space’ (!), but the idea is that a picture with a single subject can look more balanced if there is empty space on the other side of the frame. This is particularly useful for portraits if you want to stop them looking like ‘passport photos’! It’s also a good idea to allow space for a moving subject to move into. It just looks weird if a person appears to be ‘walking out of the frame’, so try to position the subject around a third of the way across in order to draw the eye into the picture rather than out of it.

Smiling bearded schoolteacher in museum carrying books


Leading lines

Leading lines are supposed to ‘lead’ the eye of the viewer into the frame – and ideally towards the main subject. They don’t have to be straight, but they tend to work best when they are. The obvious examples are railway tracks or a long, straight road stretching into the distance. S-curves can do the same job as leading lines, but they also add dynamism and visual interest to a photograph, particularly if it’s a landscape. Again, it might be a road or a railway or even a winding river. All that matters is that the line is roughly in the shape of an S, meandering left and right into the distance.

Stoa of Attalos marble colonnade and ceiling


Symmetry

The rule of thirds and others are meant to stop pictures looking too symmetrical, but sometimes symmetry suits the subject matter. If you have a reflection in the water or a human face, for example, you can’t really avoid it, so it’s sometimes best to make the most of it. That might mean positioning the line where the water meets the line exactly in the centre of the frame or choosing a square aspect ratio for the picture to enhance the symmetry of a face.

Juvenile rufescent tiger heron stretching its wings


Point of view

I’m a wildlife photographer, and the most important rule of wildlife photography is to get down to eye-level with the animals. It makes a huge difference to the composition and elevates a quick snap to an intimate portrait. Taking pictures at eye level sometimes means getting wet or muddy – especially if you’re taking pictures of insects on the ground! – but it’s the best way to go. The same applies to portraits, which usually look best taken at eye-level or above. If you get down any lower than that, you take the risk of ending up with a close-up of the model’s nostrils!

Close-up of lion lying in golden light


Motion blur

A photograph is just a static image, so it’s sometimes difficult to convey a sense of motion. One way to do that is to use a slower shutter speed in order to create motion blur. Different subjects require different shutter speeds, depending on how fast they are moving, so you might need to experiment a little bit to find that sweet spot between too much sharpness and too little. You could start with 1/4 of a second for a pedestrian walking along the street, but a Formula One car would disappear if you didn’t cut that down to 1/250 or slower. If you want to go the whole hog, you might try the ‘slow pan’. Panning just means moving the camera from side-to-side to keep a moving subject in the same part of the frame. The ‘slow’ bit relates to the shutter speed. What you get with a ‘slow pan’ should be a recognisable subject with relatively sharp eyes but blurred limbs (or wings) and a blurred background. I warn you that this is a tricky business – I once took 1,500 slow pan pictures of guillemots in the Arctic and only kept four of them! – but it’s worth it when it works…

Male azure hawker dragonfly flying through undergrowth


Depth of field

Another crucial element in wildlife and other kinds of photography is depth of field. To make sure the focus is on the subject and separate it from the background, you can use a larger aperture (such as f/4 or f/2.8). That will blur anything that’s not in the same plane as the subject while keeping the focal point sharp. The eyes are always the most important part of a portrait – whether it’s of an animal or a person – and we will always see something as being ‘in focus’ as long as they look sharp. Depth of field is just as important in landscapes, but what we generally want now is sharpness all the way through the image, so it’s better to start with a smaller aperture such as f/11 or f/16.

Cobra held by snake charmer


Odd numbers

One of the funny things about the way people see the world is that we seem to like odd-numbered groups of objects more than even-numbered ones. It doesn’t really matter why, I guess, but it’s an important point to remember when planning something like a still-life shoot. Just make sure you have three or five tomatoes rather than two or four!

Close-up of plate of three creme brulees


Fill the frame

Everyone has a camera these days because everyone has a mobile phone, but one of the problems with using your mobile to take pictures is that it’s hard to ‘fill the frame’. It’s all very well taking a selfie when you’re only a few inches from the lens, but trying to zoom in on a distant object or animal is difficult when you only have a few megapixels to play with. It’s important to remember here the difference between ‘optical zoom’ and ‘digital zoom’. The optical version is what you get naturally with a DSLR lens when you zoom in by changing the focal length; the digital version is when a phone or a bridge camera fools you into thinking you’re zooming in by focusing on a smaller and smaller portion of the sensor. It’s great when you look through the viewfinder or look at the back of the camera, but the image quality is a lot poorer. Anyway, the point is that what you really want to do is to make the subject dominate the image by making it as large as possible. If you’re taking a picture of a cheetah, you don’t want it to be a dot in the corner of the frame! You can always crop the image later using Lightroom or another editing program, but that means losing pixels, so the quality will suffer. It’s always better to get it right in camera if you can. You just need to be careful not to chop off body parts in the wrong place when you’re taking a portrait. Generally, it’s fine to crop in on someone’s face so that the top of the model’s head is not shown, but it’s not a good idea to crop people’s bodies at the joints. It just looks odd if the edge of the frame coincides with the ankles, knees, waist, elbows, wrists or neck.

Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight


Aspect ratio

For some reason, taking a picture in landscape format just seems more ‘natural’ than turning the camera 90 degrees for a portrait, but it’s important to choose the ‘right’ aspect ratio for the image. A photographer once advised me to make sure at least a third of my pictures were in portrait format, but the point is to look at the subject and decide what’s best. If there are a lot of horizontal lines, then landscape is fair enough, but if there are more vertical lines – such as tree trunks in a forest – then you should probably choose portrait instead. If you really want to emphasise the length (or height) of a subject, why not try a panorama instead? Different cameras have different set-ups, but the average aspect ratio of a DSLR is 3:2, which doesn’t suit all subjects. I’ve set up a 3:1 template in Lightroom to use for images in which nothing much is happening at the bottom and top of the frame.

Pig peeping out from behind wall


Foreground interest

When we see a beautiful view, most people’s instant reaction is to take a picture, but what we end up with a lot of the time is an image without any focus. Placing an object in the foreground can lead the eye into the frame and give the image balance. A picture taken on the beach, for instance, might be improved by getting down low in front of a weird rock or piece of driftwood.

Two boats moored by jetty at dawn


Balance

Speaking of balance, it can be a good idea to have the main subject on one side of the frame and a smaller subject on the other. Again, it’s just a matter of what looks most satisfying to the human eye.

Two kite surfers with lots of spray


Juxtaposition

Old and new, blue and orange, large and small – all these are contrasts that a photograph can pick up on and emphasise. This kind of juxtaposition can be made the point of an image. Think of an elephant beside a mouse – it’s not a picture of an elephant or a picture of a mouse, it’s a picture of the contrast between the two.

Colourful Peak Galleria fountains lit at night


Patterns, textures and colours

Sometimes, you don’t need a traditional ‘subject’ to make an image visually interesting. There are plenty of patterns in Nature or in the man-made environment; the trick is to find them amongst all the surrounding clutter. Whether it’s the bark of a tree or paint peeling on a wall, you can sometimes get a very effective abstract image out of it. Black and white images tend to emphasise patterns and shapes, as there is no colour to distract the eye, but colours can form patterns as well – it just depends on the subject and your personal preference.

Skyscraper façade showing windows reflecting grey sky


Simplicity

It’s hard to produce a visually striking image if there is no focal point, or if there are too many competing centres of attention. By creating a simple image – in terms of colour and/or composition – you can remove the distractions and focus on what’s important.

Head and stem of bright orange gerbera


Background

To increase the focus on the subject of an image, it’s a good idea to remove any distractions in the background. It’s obviously not a good idea to take a picture of someone with a telegraph pole sticking out of his head (!), but it’s easy to pay too much attention to the subject and not enough to the background unless you consciously check the viewfinder. One useful way to reduce the chances of an embarrassing blunder is to reduce the depth of field by increasing the size of the aperture. The traditional way of taking portraits of animals or people, for instance, is to use a ‘fast’ lens, which means one that has a very wide maximum aperture, and shoot wide open. That reduces the depth of field, thus blurring the background and adding to the impact of the main subject. If you have lights in the background, you can even get a nice effect called ‘bokeh’, which works well for something like a bauble with Christmas tree lights in the background.

Malachite kingfisher on dead branch facing camera


Humour

Whatever you’re photographing, there are always odd moments of humour to be found. People and animals are usually the best sources, but it doesn’t really matter what the subject is. If there’s a visual joke to be made, why not have a go? I laughed when I saw these penguins together on South Georgia. It looked as if the female was confused by the rock. Was it an egg she was supposed to hatch, or was it just a rock? She spent about five minutes looking at it and examining it before the male came up and said something like, “Come on, darling. It’s just a rock…”

King penguin stepping over rock with another


Breaking the rules

Having said all that, it’s important to break the rules once in a while. Rules tend to set expectations, so breaking them can make an image seem fresh and original. Why should the horizon be straight? Why should we see the whole face rather than just half of it? Why should the sky start two-thirds of the way up the frame? If you can’t answer these questions, then why not take a risk? It’s a bit like being a painter: you have to be able to follow the rules before you can break them!

If you’d like to know more or want to book a photography lesson with me, then please get in touch.

Good luck…

Black and white man walking with gun

Getting the most out of game drives

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The one that got away

This would’ve been a great shot. It could’ve been a great shot. It should’ve been a great shot. But it wasn’t. Why? Motion blur. If you look closely, you can see that the whole body is slightly out of focus, and that was simply because I didn’t think to change my shutter speed. I was parked in a jeep in Botswana when a herd of impala came chasing across the road. They were galloping fast, but there were five or six of them, so I did have time to focus on each of them, one by one, as they crossed the road in turn. Unfortunately, I was using my default camera settings that were designed to capture animals that were standing still. I was using an 80-400mm lens, so I had my camera on 1/320 and f/8 with auto ISO. That would normally have worked, but not for a jumping impala! What I really needed was a shutter speed of at least 1/1000 of a second. I just didn’t think…

In order to avoid moments like that, here are my answers to a few obvious questions:

What equipment do I need?

Good question. It’s obviously too late to do anything once you’re on safari, so it pays to get your equipment sorted out beforehand. People often ask me what camera I use, and it reminds me of a story I heard about Ernest Hemingway. He went to a photography exhibition in New York and was so impressed he asked to meet the photographer.

Hemingway: These pictures are great. What camera do you use?

Photographer: Well, I use a Leica with a 50mm lens for most of my shots. I’m actually a big fan of your work, too, Mr Hemingway. I’ve read all your books. Can I just ask: what typewriter do you use…?

The point is obviously that a good camera doesn’t necessarily make a good picture, and it’s mildly insulting to photographers if you ask about their equipment without complimenting them on their talent! However, all other things being equal, a good camera can make life a lot easier for wildlife photography. I’d suggest getting a full-frame DSLR with a zoom lens with a maximum focal length of at least 300mm, preferably 400mm or more. The problem with a bridge or DX camera is that you won’t get the quality you’re after, as they don’t have large enough sensors. I started off with a bridge camera and thought the zoom was great – until I saw the Nikon DSLR one of the other guys had! I had a severe case of ‘camera envy’, so I emailed a friend of mine who was a professional photographer to ask what he would get. He recommended either Nikon or Canon, but Canon made photocopiers, so that was out of the question! Instead, I bought myself a Nikon D800 – complete with 36.3 megapixels! – and it’s served me well ever since. I now also have a D810, which is an upgraded version of the D800. Having two cameras means I don’t have to worry about changing lenses. Instead, I carry them both cameras on a SpiderPro holster that looks a bit like an old Western cowboy’s gun belt. I can take them out and put them back with just one hand, and I can lock them in place if I’m going on a boat ride or clambering over rocks and don’t want to take any chances.

As for lenses, I mainly use an 80-400mm on the D800 and rent an 800mm prime on the D810. They’re both made by Nikon, and for a very good reason. I tried a Sigma 50-500mm and then a Tamron 150-600mm lens, but the images just weren’t sharp enough. I now manually check the autofocus of all my lenses using Reikan Focal automatic lens calibration software. All you do is print out a ‘target’ and set up your camera on a tripod to take pictures of it from a certain distance away. Once you load the software, it guides you through the set-up and takes a number of exposures automatically, just asking you to change the manual focus adjustment anywhere from -20 to +20. When the routine is finished, it gives you a PDF report showing the optimal adjustment value – and that’s what persuaded me to use only Nikon lenses. I’d been on a trip to Svalbard and wasn’t happy with my shots of the polar bears, which were all just a little bit soft. One of the other guys on the trip told me he did a manual focus check, and that’s when I started doing it, too. It was only when I bought my new 80-400mm lens that I realised the huge difference in sharpness: the Sigma and Tamron were down at around 1400 on the numeric scale, and the Nikon was way up at 2200! In short, check your lenses. They’re mass-produced items, so there’s always bound to be some slight variation in focus, and you’d rather fix it yourself than have to use it as an excuse when you don’t get the sharpness you want.

I also make sure I always pack a polarising filter together with a lens cleaning kit (with sensor swabs and cleaning fluid), a beanbag (for resting the lens on the windowsill of a jeep) and my laptop (so that I can download and work on my pictures in the evening). If I’m going to be near a waterfall, like Iguazu or Victoria Falls, I’ll also take my tripod and a ‘Big Stopper’ neutral density filter to give me the chance of taking creamy pictures of the water with a  long shutter speed.

What else can I do before I leave?

Getting the right equipment (and changing the time zone on your camera!) is one thing, but you can help yourself out by booking the right holiday in the right location at the right time. Check when the ‘long rains’ are if you’re going to Africa. Check when the peak season is for wildlife viewing. Check if it’s possible to visit when there’s a full moon or – even better – a harvest moon. You can ask all these questions (and more) to make sure you get the very most out of your trip. One useful sight for African expeditions is Safari Bookings, which allows you to search for packages by location, duration and price. I also like to travel light. I hate the whole airport experience, so I avoid having to check any bags in by having a roll-aboard camera bag and packing all my clothing into a jacket that has a pocket in the lining that goes all the way round. It looks a bit funny when you walk through customs – and some people just couldn’t do it – but it saves me an awful lot of time and bother.

What should I wear?

When it comes to clothing, I tend to cover up to avoid the sun and the insects. That means I wear green cargo pants (with lots of pockets!), a brown, long-sleeved shirt, a floppy hat and trainers. If I’m going on a walking safari, I’ll put on my hiking boots, and I might bring a jacket for those cool early morning starts. There’s a reason why I don’t wear bright colours. They don’t exactly frighten the animals, but you’ll get some funny looks if you turn up in hot pants and a Day-Glo pink T-shirt…!

What should I take with me on the game drives?

If you’re a keen photographer, you won’t want to miss anything while you’re out taking pictures from the 4×4, but that doesn’t mean you need to take the entire contents of your camera bag! I would simply take your camera(s) and your longest lens(es) plus a lens cloth, a couple of spare batteries and a bottle of water. A beanbag might come in handy on certain vehicles, but that’s about it. You can apply sunscreen and/or insect repellent before you leave. When it comes to clothing, I tend to cover up to avoid the sun and the insects. That means I wear cargo pants (with lots of pockets!), a long-sleeved shirt, a floppy hat and trainers. Oh, and don’t even think about wearing a day-glo orange or pink T-shirt…!

What camera settings should I use?

There’s an old photographer’s joke:

Fan to photographer: I love your pictures. What settings did you use?

Photographer to fan: f/8 and be there!

The point is that ‘being there’ is more important than any camera settings, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter at all – as shown by my shot of the leaping impala.

Exposure

The ‘Exposure Triangle’ consists of the aperture, shutter speed and ISO value, and these are the only three ways you can change the brightness of the image: either having a bigger hole, keeping it open for longer or increasing the sensitivity of the sensor. A lot of beginners stick to automatic as they don’t trust themselves to use manual settings, but they lose a lot of control by doing that. The camera doesn’t know how fast the animal is travelling or how much of it you want to be in focus, so how can it possibly decide the best combination of shutter speed and aperture? Why not experiment a little and decide for yourself the kind of image you’re going to take? Now, you still have to make sure you get the correct exposure somehow, and I’m not suggesting you use the exposure meter and manually change the settings for each shot! What I do is start off with a good set of general-purpose settings and set the ISO to automatic. That way, I get exactly the shutter speed and aperture I want, but the camera makes sure it’s correctly exposed. The general rule is that you need a shutter speed the inverse of your focal length, so, If I’m using my 80-400mm lens at the top end of the zoom range, that means around 1/400th of a second. (Bear in mind, though, that you have to take into account the speed of the animal as well as how steady you can hold the camera!) I generally like to take ‘portraits’ of the animals, so I want to throw the background out of focus to emphasise the eyes. That means a wide aperture such as f/5.6, but I’ve started using f/8 because my lens tests tell me that both my lenses perform at their sharpest at f/8, and I want the maximum sharpness I can get. The problem comes, obviously, when there’s not enough light to use your default settings, or the animals are moving too fast. That’s when you need to take charge and make a difficult decision: which is the most important, the shutter speed, the aperture or the ISO? If it’s a fast-moving animal, the shutter speed obviously takes priority. If the light level is dropping, then you probably want to compromise and change both aperture and shutter speed by 1/3 of a stop (or more). Most stock agencies don’t want pictures taken at high ISO values (640+), so that’s something to bear in mind if you’re trying to sell your work.

Autofocus

Manual focus has its place in macro photography and in low light conditions, but wildlife photography generally demands that we use one of the two methods of autofocus: single point (AF-S on the Nikon) or continuous (AF-C). I generally keep my D800 with the wide-angle lens on single point, as I’ll be using it to take landscape shots, but I keep my D810 with the long zoom lens on AF-C 3D, as I’ll be using it to take pictures of animals. In fact, sharpness is so important for wildlife shots that I use what’s called ‘back-button focusing’, which means setting up the camera so that I can focus by pressing the AF-ON button on the back with my right thumb. The AF-C 3D setting continuously focuses on one particular point on the animal that you select when you first press the AF button, and it magically follows that point even if the animal is moving. It’s not perfect, but what it does mean is that you don’t have to worry about losing focus when you half-press the shutter and then take a picture. By separating the focusing from releasing the shutter, you get the best chance of getting that all-important sharpness in the animal’s eye.

White balance

You can always change it in Lightroom later (or another image-processing software package), but I generally still try to update my white balance setting as the light changes. It saves time later, and it follows the general principle of trying to get everything right in camera. Messing around in Lightroom should always be a last resort.

Quality (RAW)

Shoot in RAW. There. Is. No. Alternative.

Other settings

One of the confusing and frustrating thing about the DSLR is the number of settings there are and the fact that you can’t ‘reset’ everything in one go. It would be wonderful if there were one button that would do everything, but there isn’t. There are mechanical as well as electronic settings, so it’s impossible to assign one button to change both. As it is, it’s worth having a mental checklist to go through before you go out on the game drive and even while you’re out there. The main settings to monitor are the following:

  • Mode (Manual, unless you’ve never picked up a camera before…)
  • Shutter speed (1/focal length, although Vibration Reduction means you might get away with up to four stops ‘slower’)
  • Aperture (f/5.6 or f/8, depending on where your lens’s sweet spot is)
  • ISO mode (I generally use ‘auto’)
  • Exposure compensation (0 – unless you’re photographing a very bright or dark scene)
  • Autofocus (AF-C 3D for wildlife)
  • White balance (Daylight – if it’s your typical African sunny day!)
  • Active D-lighting (Auto or off unless you’re taking a picture into the sun and want detail in the shot – it’s a kind of in-camera HDR to squeeze the histogram for images that would be too contrasty otherwise)
  • Lens lock (off, obviously – you don’t want to miss a shot because you can’t zoom in!)

What should I do while we’re driving around?

It’s all very well chatting to the guy next to you and having a laugh, but you’re there to take pictures, so you should follow these guidelines if you don’t want to be disappointed:

  • Always keep an eye out. I try to sit in the front seat so that I get a better view and can let the driver and the rest of the group know if I see something. If it’s not particularly interesting or too far away to get a good shot, I’ll just point or say, “Impala,” but I’m always ready to pat the driver on the shoulder or tell him to stop if there’s the prospect of a good sighting. One of the best sightings I had in Botswana came from the cook’s assistant sitting in the back of the jeep. As we were driving along, he suddenly said something in Setswana to our driver, who stopped and then backed up to see what was going on. After another incomprehensible conversation, I was shown a spotted eagle owl sitting on a branch not 10 yards away!
  • Don’t be shy. The guide will often be the one to spot an animal or a bird, and he or she will usually stop without having to be asked. However, if you spot something and want to take a picture, it’s important to stand up for yourself. Just tap the driver on the shoulder or ask him to stop. You always remember the shots you missed more than the shots you made, so be brave!
  • Be prepared. A lot of game drives involve looking at nothing in particular for hours on end, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ready at all times. You never know when someone will spot a white rhino or a leopard, so you need to make sure you have your camera(s) to hand with the right shutter speed, aperture and other settings dialled in. I tend to use 1/000 of a second at f/8 with auto ISO, but it depends on the light level. In the early mornings, you often have to make some awkward compromises. Just remember, though, that it’s better to get a sharp shot at a high ISO than a blurred one at ISO 100 and 1/60!
  • Keep the noise down. An animal or bird might seem quite far away, but they spook quite easily, so do make sure you don’t speak too loudly – or shout out something in your excitement! The other guests will thank you for it…
  • Keep still. You’re usually in a jeep with three or four other people, all wanting to take the best photographs they can, so you have to be sympathetic with your movements. If someone’s trying to take a picture, try to move as carefully and slowly as you can – or just wait for them to finish. You don’t want to rock the vehicle or jog an elbow and ruin the perfect shot!
  • Be polite. Tempers sometimes fray in the excitement of a game drive, when everyone wants to get the best possible view of the animals, but it’s worth keeping cool and being aware of those around you. If you take too long over a shot or you accidentally get in the way of someone else, just apologise and move on. People go on safari to enjoy themselves and have a good time, not harbour festering grudges over the guy who thought it was all about him…!
  • Take care of your kit. I always cover my lenses with dust- and waterproof covers when I’m shooting. It might not seem necessary in some countries and in some climates, but you never know when you might have a sudden shower or get a cloud of dust in your face from the jeep in front. I also take a lens cloth and/or a dust blower with me on game drives, and it’s worth checking your lens every now and then to make sure it’s not getting dusty. It’s hard to tell sometimes when you have a lens hood on, but it’s very easy for lenses to get dirty during the course of a long game drive. I found Botswana particularly dusty, and there was a lot of dust in the air in Tadoba that gradually stuck to my camera and turned my lens cloth red whenever I used it!

What makes a good photograph?

Dust, air and spume. That’s the Holy Trinity of wildlife photography, according to Paul Goldstein, who is a wildlife photographer and also a great speaker and raconteur. I’ve been on two trips he’s led to Svalbard to see the polar bear and Tadoba in India to see the tiger, and I’ve seen several of his presentations. The idea is that ‘dust’ is thrown up by the movement of the animals and gives you a sense of dynamism and energy, ‘air’ means that an animal is in the air and about to land – so we have a sense of anticipation and expectation – and ‘spume’ is the spray that is thrown up by movement in water.

That’s just Paul’s view, and there are obviously other aspects to the question. One thing that he also points out is the difference between a ‘record shot’ and a ‘photograph’. To him, a ‘record shot’ is just a snapshot, a picture that records exactly what’s in front of you, but a ‘photograph’ is something that obeys the rules of composition and has been consciously constructed by the photographer to provoke an emotional reaction. There aren’t that many rules of composition in wildlife photography, but it’s worth bearing them in mind when you’re out shooting. Here are a few of the common ones:

  • Fill the frame. Robert Capa once said: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” People don’t want to have to search the image for the animal, so zoom in or ask your driver to get closer so that you can make it the centre of attention!
  • Use leading lines. Where available, they can lead the eye of the viewer into the image, for instance in a picture of an impala on the horizon crossing a road leading into the distance.
  • Use the Rule of Thirds. Human eyes don’t like things that are too symmetrical – unless you can manage a perfect reflection – so try to put the focal point of your shot off-centre. That adds dynamism and a different kind of balance.
  • Focus on the eyes. People don’t care if 99% of an animal is out of focus as long as the eyes are sharp.
  • Wait for ‘the decisive moment’. A guide in the States once compared my shots to those of another guy on the trip. He said that Stefan’s were always technically perfect, very sharp and with gorgeous, saturated colours, but mine were all about the moment. I take that as a compliment. It means you have to wait for the right moment to take the shot. Don’t just keep clicking away like a Japanese tourist by Big Ben. Compose your shot and then wait for the animal to do something to make it more memorable. It could be a sneeze, a yawn – anything! – but it will mark your picture out as special. Here are a couple of examples:
    • If a lion is walking across the road in front of your jeep, don’t take the shot until it steps forward with the leg that’s furthest away from you. That means it will have to turn its body and show more of its chest in the shot, which makes a better shot.
    • Try to capture pictures of birds in flight. Portraits are all very well, but an action shot is usually better. Given how quickly birds take off, the best way to capture them with their wings spread is just before they land. Find a bird on a branch and take a few ‘portrait’ shots, but don’t give up when it flies away. A lot of birds have a ‘favourite’ branch, so it’s worth focusing on it and waiting for the bird to come back. If it does, take a series of shots in continuous mode, starting when the bird is just about to land. That’s the best way to capture the prize, which is a picture of the bird with its wings spread, showing off all its plumage. Just make sure you have reasonable depth of field (at least f/8) and a high enough shutter speed (at least 1/1000).
  • Tell a story. The tagline to this website is ‘Every picture tells a story’, and that’s a goal we should all aspire to when taking pictures. What are we trying to say? What mood are we trying to create? What’s the emotion behind the shot? It’s not always easy, but picking exactly the right composition can create humour, joy, sorrow, horror and any number of other powerful reactions – which is just what we want.
  • Break the rules – selectively! Obeying the rules will give you a nice, balanced image, but Paul for one hates ‘nice’, and I can see his point. Sometimes, the best way of creating a strongly emotional image is to break a rule or two. You have to do it sparingly – and consciously – but it sometimes gives you that much more of a chance of creating a genuinely arresting image. One of his favourite techniques is the ‘slow pan’, which means following a moving animal or bird with a slow shutter speed and taking a number of shots as it goes past. The idea is to create a sense of movement by blurring the background and the legs or wings of the animal or bird while keeping the body and especially the eyes sharp. It’s a technique that’s very difficult to master. You have to do a lot of experimentation, and it helps to have a tripod! I once went on a boat trip in Svalbard and took 1,504 pictures of guillemots using the slow pan – but I only kept four of them! It sounds like a lot of effort, but it’s worth it in the end.

Red Xmas tree star with bokeh lights

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Red Xmas tree star with bokeh lights

The idea

I live in an Art Deco mansion block in Putney, and every year the porters put a Christmas tree in the entrance hall. Last year, I took some pictures of some of the baubles, inspired by an email from one of the photographic magazines about how to capture bokeh lighting. This year, the tree and the baubles were different, so I decided to have another go.

The location

Ormonde Court, Upper Richmond Road, London SW15 6TW, United Kingdom, around 2100 on 12 December 2014.

The equipment

  • Nikon D800 DSLR camera
  • Nikon AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens
  • Nikon SB-910 Speedlight flash
  • Manfrotto 190XProB tripod with 496RC2 universal joint head
  • Hähnel HRN 280 remote release.

I’ve just managed to remortgage my flat in Notting Hill, so I’ve been investing in a few photographic supplies. Ever since a German called Stefan took a magnificent shot of Old Faithful at night using flash, I’ve wanted a proper flashgun. Well, now I have one. I bought the Nikon SB-910 Speedlight a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived just in time for this shoot. I didn’t know whether I’d need it or not, but I was prepared to experiment.

The settings

  • Manual ISO 100
  • f/5.6
  • 1 second
  • 105mm
  • Tungsten white balance
  • Single-point auto-focus

The technique

In the last of these posts, I mentioned how I’d got used to taking a tripod with me in almost all circumstances, and last night was no exception. Last year, I was generally pleased with my shots of the baubles, but the ISO was far too high. I was using my tripod, funnily enough, but to hold the bauble rather than my camera! This year, I decided I would definitely mount the camera on the tripod, but that left me with nothing to hold the baubles. I thought about using a light stand from my flash kit, but I needed something horizontal rather than vertical so that I could hang the decorations from it. I then had the idea of using my golf clubs. I could stand the bag in the lobby and balance one of the clubs on top, held in place by the other clubs.

As it turned out, I’d forgotten that the bag would be at an angle of 45 degrees, so my original plan didn’t work, but I simply pulled my 4-iron half-way out and hung the first bauble from that. It was a silver reindeer, but the green wire loop wasn’t very long, and I wouldn’t have been able to get the shots I wanted without the golf club getting in the frame. I needed a piece of string. I thought about going back to my flat, but leaving my golf clubs and my camera unattended in the entrance hall didn’t seem like a sensible idea! Fortunately, I was wearing trainers, so I just used one of the laces. It took a few gos to get each bauble to point in the right direction and remain still – particularly as there was a stream of curious residents opening the front door on their way home from work! – but I managed in the end. Phew!

I took lots of pictures of the silver reindeer, a red bauble with a spiral pattern on it and the red star shown above, and I played around with the flash settings to try to make the background a bit darker. Sadly my new flash was so powerful that I couldn’t manage that – even with -3.0EV of exposure compensation! There might’ve been a better way, but it was the first time I’ve ever used a flashgun, so I’m still a newbie.

The main problem I had in taking the shots was actually getting enough depth-of-field. The reindeer was fine, but the round baubles and even the star were proving a nightmare. If I focused on the front of the bauble, the metal cap and wire loop were out of focus, but, if I focused on those, the rest of the bauble was out of focus. I’m an absolute stickler for sharpness in my images, so I wasn’t sure what to do. In the end, I stopped down a little bit and hoped that f/5.6 would be a small enough aperture to keep everything acceptably sharp. I tried ‘chimping’ (or checking the shots on the LCD screen) a few times, but it was tricky to tell. My problem was a kind of Catch-22: the three variables controlling depth-of-field are normally the focal length, the aperture and the relative distances of the camera to the subject and the subject to the background. I couldn’t change to a wide-angle lens, as I needed to limit the background to just the Christmas tree; I couldn’t change to a much smaller aperture without making the bokeh circles of the blurred Christmas lights in the background too small; and I couldn’t change the relative positions of the camera, bauble and tree without changing the composition completely. Hmm… As you can see from the shot above, the two arms on the right of the red star didn’t turn out completely sharp, but it was ‘good enough for Government work’. Shutterstock obviously didn’t accept it – they’re very hot on sharpness! – but I did win an award on Pixoto for the sixth best image uploaded to the Christmas category!

The post-processing

I made three changes to this shot:

  1. I had the camera on ‘Tungsten’ white balance, as I’d just read somewhere that I should use the amber filter on the flashgun when shooting indoors in order to avoid a clash of different light sources. However, it turned out that the shot looked a lot warmer with the ‘Flash’ white balance, and that was just the look I was after at Christmastime.
  2. A lot of my images end up being quite dark, and I’m not sure whether it’s just because I’m lucky to spend a lot of time in very sunny places or whether there’s a problem with my camera! In this case, I actually had to push the exposure up by +2EV in Aperture to make it look like all the others. I have a feeling that’s because I changed from f/2.8 to f/5.6 to get more depth-of-field but forgot to lengthen the shutter speed to compensate. Silly me…
  3. I was desperately trying to frame the shot perfectly so I wouldn’t have to crop, but the balance of the bauble with the ‘negative space’ on the right wasn’t quite right, so I cropped in slightly to position the star a third of the way into the frame.

Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight

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Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight

I’m a photographer (among other things), and this is the first of a series of posts about my favourite photographs. I’ll tell you how I took them and break down the shot into the idea, the location, the equipment, the settings, the technique and any post-processing.

The idea

When I took this shot, I was at a Battle of Hastings re-enactment at Battle Abbey in Sussex. I was there to take pictures of the battle scenes between enthusiasts dressed up as Normans and Saxons, and I had no idea there was going to be a falconry display until I bought my ticket and was given a flyer with the plan for the day.

The golden eagle is my favourite bird (isn’t it everyone’s?!), so I was very excited to be able to see one in action. The falconers from Raphael Historical Falconry put on a couple of displays with a variety of birds, including a gyrfalcon and a Harris hawk, but the golden eagle was the highlight. Afterwards, I wandered over to their tent, and I was able to get within just a few feet of all the birds. The falconer was happy to chat with the spectators with a bird on his arm (so to speak!), and later he fed and watered the birds outside. That gave me the chance to set up my tripod and get a few good close-ups, and this was the best of the lot.

The location

Battle Abbey, High Street, Hastings and Battle, East Sussex TN33 0AD, United Kingdom, around 1500 on 11 October 2014.

The equipment

  • Nikon D800 DSLR camera
  • Sigma 50-500mm F4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM lens
  • Manfrotto 190XProB tripod with 496RC2 universal joint head
  • Hähnel HRN 280 remote release.

I was a bit worried about using my ‘Bigma’ to take this picture, as I hadn’t been very impressed with it on my trip to Spitsbergen to see the polar bears. Admittedly, the bears were usually a few hundred yards away, and no zoom lens is at its best when it’s at its longest focal length, but I was disappointed that my shots were so soft. As a result, I did a manual focus check and discovered that the calculated auto-focus fine tune setting was a whopping -12! Armed with this new improvement to the sharpest tool in my box, I was ready for anything…

PS They call it the ‘Bigma’ as it’s made by Sigma, and it’s enormous!

The settings

  • Auto ISO 110
  • f/9
  • 1/250
  • 500mm
  • Daylight white balance
  • Single-point auto-focus

I had the camera on Manual with ISO on Auto, which I thought was appropriate for a day when lots of things would be happening, and I’d be taking candid shots without much opportunity to sit down and check my settings. However, I should probably have set the ISO to its optimum value of 100 for this shot, as I had plenty of time.

The technique

I’m generally a travel and wildlife photographer, but I normally don’t use a tripod as it gets in the way and doesn’t work too well in a Land-Rover moving at 40mph! However, I learnt a new perspective from a professional photographer called Mark Carwardine. He happened to be on a cruise to Spitsbergen that I went on a few months ago, and he was always carrying around his tripod with the legs fully extended – even on the Zodiac inflatables that we used to land on the islands. I thought to myself, If he can do it, so can I! After that, I’ve tried to use a tripod wherever possible. I love really sharp wildlife shots, and a 36.3-megapixel DSLR and a tripod make a winning combination.

Another important thing about wildlife shots is to get down to the level of the animal or bird you’re shooting. You can see from this shot that I’m right at eye-level with the eagle, and that gives the sense of power and intimacy I was looking for.

Finally, I’ve learnt from a couple of portrait shoots the value of the ‘catchlight’. This is the reflection of the light source that you see in the eye of your subject. It’s just as important with wildlife as with people, and I was lucky enough to get a break in the clouds that allowed the sun to provide the perfect catchlight. Lucky me!

The post-processing

I changed from a PC to a Mac a few years ago, so I do all my post-processing in Aperture. I suppose I should upgrade to Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw or Photoshop, but iPhoto was the default image-processing software on the Mac, and Aperture was the cheapest upgrade!

I only had two changes to make to this shot:

  1. Even at 500mm, I still wasn’t quite close enough for the bird’s head to fill the frame, so I had to crop in later. I’ve found from experience that 6.3 megapixels is the minimum size that the major online photo libraries accept, so I never go below 6.4 MP (to avoid rounding errors), and that’s the new size of this file.
  2. In the end, the automatic ISO setting was close enough to the optimum of 100, but the shot was slightly overexposed due to the dark colours of the eagle’s feathers and the grassy background, so I had to reduce the exposure by 0.5EV.

You must be crazy!

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2+2=5

Why? What’s wrong with that…?

Teachers and tutors ask pupils to check their work, but how can you do that in Maths without doing the whole sum all over again? Well, you can’t! So how are you supposed to check your work?

What you have to understand first of all is that checking everything is right is very different from checking nothing is obviously wrong. To check everything is right means doing the whole paper twice, but you obviously don’t have time to do that. Checking nothing is obviously wrong is much easier because it just means doing a ‘quick and dirty’ calculation in your head. It doesn’t guarantee that the answer is right, but it’s a good compromise. I call it ‘sanity checking’, which means making sure your answers are not crazy! Unfortunately, there isn’t one method that works for every question – it depends on what type of question it is – but here are a few examples:

Algebra

If you have to ‘solve for 𝑥’ and it’s a difficult question, try putting your answer back into the original equation and seeing if one side equals the other, eg if you think 𝑥 = 5, then that works for 2𝑥 + 6 = 16, but not for 3𝑥 + 2 = 5. That would be crazy!

Multiplication

Every multiplication sum starts with multiplying the last digit of each number together, so try doing that when you’ve got your answer and checking if the last digit of the result is equal to the last digit of the answer, eg 176 x 467 is going to end in a 2 because 6 x 7 = 42, which also ends with a 2. Your answer couldn’t end in any other number. That would be crazy!

Rounding

If you have any kind of sum that involves adding, subtracting, multiplication or division, an easy way to check it is to round the numbers to one or two significant figures (eg to the nearest hundred) and work out the answer in your head. If it’s close enough, then your answer is not obviously wrong. If it’s nowhere near, then you’ll have to do it again, eg 1.7 x 3.4 is close to 2 x 3, so the answer might be 5.78, but it wouldn’t be 57.8. That would be crazy!

Units

Most answers in Maths tests need some kind of unit, such as kg, m, cm or ml. Sometimes, the units are provided, but sometimes they’re not. If they’re not, you just need to make sure that you use the right ones, eg if the scale of a map is 1:100,000, the distance represented by 9.8cm is 9.8km, not 9.8m. That would be crazy!

 

Negative numbers

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negative-numbers

Working with negative numbers can be confusing, but a few simple rules can help you add, subtract, multiply and divide successfully:

Adding and subtracting

If the operator and the sign are the same, then you must add the number, eg 4 – -3 = 4 + 3 = 7 or 4 + +3 = 7.

If the operator and the sign are different, then you must subtract the number, eg 4 + -3 = 4 – 3 = 1 or 4 – +3 = 1.

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. 14 – -3
  2. -4 + -7
  3. 21 – +8
  4. -8 + -7
  5. 6 – -4

Multiplication and division

If the signs of the two numbers are the same, then you must make the answer positive, eg -4 x -3 = 4 x 3 = 12 or +4 x +3 = 4 x 3 = 12.

If the signs of the two numbers are different, then you must make the answer negative, eg -4 x +3 = -12 or +4 x -3 = -12.

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. 1 × -3
  2. -8 ÷ -4
  3. 2 × -7
  4. -14 ÷ -7
  5. 6 × -4

Useful terms in Maths

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maths

Maths is complicated, but a good first step on the road to understanding it is to get to know the most useful terms. There are lists in the front of the Bond books, but here’s my own contribution. I hope it helps!

Algebra: expressions using letters to represent unknown values, eg 2(x + 3) = 16.

Angles: there are three types of angle, depending on the number of degrees.

  • acute angles are between 0 and 90 degrees.
  • obtuse angles are between 90 and 180 degrees.
  • reflex angles are between 180 and 360 degrees.

Arc: part of the circumference of a circle.

Averages: there are three types of average, and they are all useful in different ways.

  • The mean is found by adding up all the values and dividing the total by how many there are, eg the mean of the numbers 1-10 is 5.5, as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 55, and 55 ÷ 10 = 5.5.
  • The mode is the most common value (or values), eg the mode of 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 is 2.
  • The median of an odd number of values sorted by size is the one in the middle, eg the median of the numbers 1-5 is 3. The median of an even number of values is the mean of the two numbers in the middle, eg the median of the numbers 1-10 is 5.5, as 5 and 6 are the numbers in the middle, and 11 ÷ 2 = 5.5.

Chord: a straight line drawn between two points on the circumference of a circle.

Circumference: the distance all the way round the edge of a circle.

Congruent: triangles are congruent if they are the same shape and size, eg two right-angled triangles with sides of 3cm, 4cm and 5cm would be ‘congruent’, even if one is the mirror image of the other. You can prove that two triangles are congruent by using any of the following methods: SAS (Side-Angle-Side), SSS (Side-Side-Side), ASA (Angle-Side-Angle), AAS (Angle-Angle-Side) and RHS or HL (Right-angle-Hypotenuse-Side or Hypotenuse-Leg). If all three measurements of the angles and/or sides are equal, the triangles are congruent. You can only create a congruent copy of a triangle by translation, reflection or rotation. (Note: congruence is the same as similarity, except that the triangles have to be the same size.)

Cube: the result of multiplying any number by itself twice, eg 8 is the cube of 2, as 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

Cube root: the number that has to be multiplied by itself twice to make another number, eg 2 is the cube root of 8, as 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

Cuboid: a solid with a rectangle for each of the six sides, eg a shoe box.

Denominator: the number on the bottom of a fraction, eg 2 is the denominator of ½.

Diameter: the length of a line drawn across a circle passing through the centre.

Equation: any line of numbers and operators with an equals sign in the middle, showing that the two sides balance, eg 4x + 12 = 34.

Factor: a number that goes into another number evenly, eg 6 is a factor or 12.

Fibonacci series: a sequence of numbers created by adding the previous two numbers together to get the next one, eg 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…

Formula: a way of calculating the answer to a common problem using letters or words, eg the formula for distance is speed x time (or D = S x T).

Highest common factor (or HCF): the highest number that goes into two other numbers evenly, eg the HCF of 12 and 18 is 6.

Improper fraction: a fraction that is greater than one (in other words, the numerator is greater than the denominator), eg 9/5.

Lowest common multiple (or LCM) / Lowest common denominator (or LCD): the lowest number that is divisible by two other numbers, eg the LCM of 6 and 8 is 24.

Multiple: a number that can be divided evenly by another number, eg 12 is a multiple of 6.

Numerator: the number on the top of a fraction, eg 3 is the numerator of ¾.

Order of operations: the sequence of doing basic mathematical sums when you have a mixture of, say, addition and multiplication. BIDMAS (or BODMAS) is a good way of remembering it, as it stands for:

  • Brackets
  • Indices/Order (in other words, squares, cubes and so on)
  • Division
  • Multiplication
  • Addition
  • Subtraction

Note that addition doesn’t come ‘before’ subtraction – these operations have to be done in the order in which they occur in the sum, and it makes a difference to the answer, eg 4 – 3 + 2 = 3 if you do the operations in order, which is correct, but you’d get the wrong answer of -1 if you did 3 + 2 first.

Operator: the sign telling you which mathematical operation to do. The most common ones are +, -, x and ÷.

Parallel: two lines are parallel if they will never meet, eg the rails on a railway line.

Perimeter: the distance all the way round the outside of a shape.

Perpendicular: at 90 degrees to each other.

Pi (or π): a constant used to work out the circumference and area of circles, often shown as 22/7 or 3.14 although it’s actually an ‘irrational’ number, which means it goes on for ever.

Prime factors: the lowest prime numbers that can be multiplied together to make a given number, eg the prime factors of 12 are 2² x 3.

Prime numbers: a number that can only be divided by itself and one, eg 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13…

Probability: the chance of something happening, calculated as the number of ways of getting what you want divided by the total number of possible outcomes, eg the chance of a coin toss being heads is ½ as there is one ‘heads’ side but two sides in total. To work out the probability of a sequence of events, you have to multiply the individual probabilities together, eg the chance of a coin toss being heads twice in a row is ½ x ½ = ¼

Product: the result of multiplying two numbers together, eg 35 is the product of 5 and 7.

Quadrilateral: a four-sided shape such as the following:

  • Kite: a quadrilateral with two pairs of equal sides next to each other (or ‘adjacent’ to each other).
  • Parallelogram: a quadrilateral with opposite sides parallel to each other.
  • Rectangle: a quadrilateral with two opposite pairs of equal sides and four right angles.
  • Rhombus: a quadrilateral with equal sides.
  • Square: a quadrilateral with equal sides and four right angles.
  • Trapezium: a quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides. (Note: an isosceles trapezium is symmetrical.)

Radius: the distance from the centre of a circle to the circumference.

Range: the highest minus the lowest value in a list, eg the range of the numbers 1-10 is 9.

Regular: a shape is regular if all its sides and angles are equal, eg a 50p piece is a regular (-ish!) heptagon.

Right angle: an angle of 90 degrees.

Sector: a ‘slice’ of a circle in between two radii.

Segment: a part of a circle separated from the rest by a chord.

Shapes: the name of each shape depends on the number of sides. Here are the first 12.

  • Quadrilaterals have four sides.
  • Pentagons have five sides.
  • Hexagons have six sides.
  • Heptagons have seven sides.
  • Octagons have eight sides.
  • Nonagons have nine sides.
  • Decagons have 10 sides.
  • Hendecagons have 11 sides.
  • Dodecagons have 12 sides.

Similar: triangles are similar if they are the same shape, but not necessarily the same size, eg a right-angled triangle with sides of 3cm, 4cm and 5cm is ‘similar’ to a right-angled triangle with sides of 6cm, 8cm and 10cm. (Note: similarity is the same as congruence, except that the triangles don’t have to be the same size.)

Square number: the result of multiplying any number by itself, eg 49 is a square number, as 7 x 7 = 49.

Square root: the number that has to be multiplied by itself to make another number, eg 6 is the square root of 36, as 6 x 6 = 36.

Sum: the result of adding two numbers together, eg 17 is the sum of 8 and 9.

Tangent: either a straight line that touches the circumference of a circle OR the length of the opposite side of a triangle divided by the length of the adjacent side

Triangles: there are four main types, each with different properties.

  • equilateral triangles have all three sides the same length and all three angles the same.
  • isosceles triangles have two sides the same length and two angles the same.
  • scalene triangles have three sides of different lengths with three different angles.
  • right-angled triangles have one 90-degree angle.

Variable: an unknown in algebra, eg x or y.

Algebra

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Nothing makes the heart of a reluctant mathematician sink like an algebra question.algebra

Algebra is supposed to make life easier. By learning a formula or an equation, you can solve any similar type of problem whatever the numbers involved. However, an awful lot of students find it difficult, because letters just don’t seem to ‘mean’ as much as numbers. Here, we’ll try to make life a bit easier…

Gathering terms

X’s and y’s look a bit meaningless, but that’s the point. They can stand for anything. The simplest form of question you’ll have to answer is one that involves gathering your terms. That just means counting how many variables or unknowns you have (like x and y). I like to think of them as pieces of fruit, so an expression like…

2x + 3y – x + y

…just means ‘take away one apple from two apples and add one banana to three more bananas’. That leaves you with one apple and four bananas, or…

x + 4y

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. 3x + 4y – 2x + y
  2. 2m + 3n – m + 3n
  3. p + 2q + 3p – 3q
  4. 2a – 4b + a + 4b
  5. x + y – 2x + 2y

Multiplying out brackets

This is one of the commonest types of question. All you need to do is write down the same expression without the brackets. To take a simple example:

2(x + 3)

In this case, all you need to do is multiply everything inside the brackets by the number outside, which is 2, but what do we do about the ‘+’ sign? We could just multiply 2 by x, write down ‘+’ and then multiply 2 by 3:

2x + 6

However, that gets us into trouble if we have to subtract one expression in brackets from another (see below for explanation) – so it’s better to think of the ‘+’ sign as belonging to the 3. In other words, you multiply 2 by x and then 2 by +3. Once you’ve done that, you just convert the ‘+’ sign back to an operator. It gives exactly the same result, but it will work ALL the time rather than just with simple sums!

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. 2(a + 5)
  2. 3(y + 2)
  3. 6(3 + b)
  4. 3(a – 3)
  5. 4(3 – p)

Solving for x

Another common type of question involves finding out what x stands for (or y or z or any other letter). The easiest way to look at this kind of equation is using fruit again. In the old days, scales in a grocery shop sometimes had a bowl on one side and a place to put weights on the other. To weigh fruit, you just needed to make sure that the weights and the fruit balanced and then add up all the weights. The point is that every equation always has to balance – the very word ‘equation’ comes from ‘equal’ – so you have to make sure that anything you do to one side you also have to do to the other.

There are three main types of operation you need to do in the following order:

  1. Multiplying out any brackets
  2. Adding or subtracting
  3. Multiplying or dividing

Once you’ve multiplied out any brackets (see above), what you want to do is to simplify the equation by removing one expression at a time until you end up with something that says x = The Answer. It’s easier to start with adding and subtracting and then multiply or divide afterwards (followed by any square roots). To take the same example as before:

2(x + 3) = 8

Multiplying out the brackets gives us:

2x + 6 = 8

Subtracting 6 from both sides gives us:

2x = 2

Dividing both sides by 2 gives us the final answer:

x = 1

Simple!

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. b + 5 = 9
  2. 3y = 9
  3. 6(4 + c) = 36
  4. 3(a – 2) = 24
  5. 4(3 – p) = -8

Multiplying two expressions in brackets (‘FOIL’ method)

When you have to multiply something in brackets by something else in brackets, you should use what’s called the ‘FOIL’ method. FOIL is an acronym that stands for:

First
Outside
Inside
Last

This is simply a good way to remember the order in which to multiply the terms, so we start with the first terms in each bracket, then move on to the outside terms in the whole expression, then the terms in the middle and finally the last terms in each bracket. Just make sure that you use the same trick we saw earlier, combining the operators with the numbers and letters before multiplying them together. For example:

(a + 1)(a + 2)

First we multiply the first terms in each bracket:

a x a

…then the outside terms:

a x +2

…then the inside terms:

+1 x a

…and finally the last terms in each bracket:

+1 x +2

Put it all together and simplify:

(a + 1)(a + 2)

= a² + 2a + a + 2

=a² + 3a + 2

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. (a + 1)(b + 2)
  2. (a – 1)(a + 2)
  3. (b + 1)(a – 2)
  4. (p – 1)(q + 2)
  5. (y + 1)(y – 3)

Factorising quadratics (‘product and sum’ method)

This is just the opposite of multiplying two expressions in brackets. Normally, factorisation involves finding the Highest Common Factor (or HCF) and putting that outside a set of brackets containing the rest of the terms, but some expressions can’t be solved that way, eg a² + 3a + 2 (from the previous example). There is no combination of numbers and/or letters that goes evenly into a², 3a and 2, so we have to factorise using two sets of brackets. To do this, we use the ‘product and sum’ method. This simply means that we need to find a pair of numbers whose product equals the last number and whose sum equals the multiple of a. In this case, it’s 1 and 2 as +1 x +2 = +2 and +1 + +2 = +3. The first term in each bracket is just going to be a as a x a = a². Hence, factorising a² + 3a + 2 gives (a + 1)(a + 2). You can check it by using the FOIL method (see above) to multiply out the brackets:

(a + 1)(a + 2)

= a² + 2a + a + 2

=a² + 3a + 2

Subtracting one expression from another*

Here’s the reason why we don’t just write down operators as we come across them. Here’s a simple expression we need to simplify:

20 – 4(x – 3) = 16

If we use the ‘wrong’ method, then we get the following answer:

20 – 4(x – 3) = 16

20 – 4x – 12 = 16

8 – 4x = 16

4x = -8

x = -2

Now, if we plug our answer for x back into the original equation, it doesn’t balance:

20 – 4(-2 – 3) = 16

20 – 4 x -5 = 16

20 – -20 = 16

40 = 16!!

That’s why we have to use the other method, treating the operator as a negative or positive sign to be added to the number before we multiply it by whatever’s outside the brackets:

20 – 4(x – 3) = 16

20 – 4x + 12 = 16

32 – 4x = 16

4x = 16

x = 4

That makes much more sense, as we can see:

20 – 4(4 – 3) = 16

20 – 4 x 1 = 16

20 – 4 = 16

16 = 16

Thank Goodness for that!

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. 30 – 3(p – 1) = 0
  2. 20 – 3(a – 3) = 5
  3. 12 – 4(x – 2) = 4
  4. 24 – 6(x – 3) = 6
  5. 0 – 6(x – 2) = -12

Other tips to remember

  • If you have just one variable, leave out the number 1, eg 1x is just written as x.
  • When you have to multiply a number by a letter, leave out the times sign, eg 2 x p is written as 2p.
  • The squared symbol only relates to the number or letter immediately before it, eg 3m² means 3 x m x m, NOT (3 x m) x (3 x m).

It’s all about the apostrophe

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Apostrophes. The difference between feeling you’re nuts and feeling your nuts.Apostrophe

The apostrophe is tricky. It means different things at different times. This article is meant to clear up any confusion and help you use apostrophes, which might mean you get straight As in your exams – or should that be A’s?!

  1. The main reason for using apostrophes is to show a contraction, which is a word made up of two other words shunted together – the apostrophe just stands for the missing letter(s), eg didn’t = did not, could’ve = could have and won’t = will not.
  2. The second most common usage is in showing the possessive, in other words showing that something belongs to someone (or something). This is where it gets tricky, because where you put the apostrophe depends on how many things you’re talking about. If the noun is plural and ends with -s, you just need to put an apostrophe on the end of the word. In all other cases,  you should put ‘s, eg two horses’ hooves, BUT a horse’s hooves or the children’s books or St James’s Palace.
  3. The other occasion when you might find an apostrophe is in the plural of individual letters or numbers. Somehow, it just looks better, eg he got three A’s at O-level back in the 1980’s.

If you think you’ve mastered the rules, try taking this quiz!

Spelling rules

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The problem with the English is that we’ve invaded (and been invaded by) so many countries that our language has ended up with a mish-mash of spelling rules.

Keep calm and check your spelling

 

 

 

 

 

 

English is among the easiest languages to learn but among the most difficult to master. One of the problems is spelling. We have so many loan words from so many different languages that we’ve been left with a huge number of spelling rules – and all of them have exceptions! Contrast that with Spanish, for example, where what you see is generally what you get. The problem for students of English, then, is that it’s very difficult to find shortcuts to improve your spelling, and an awful lot of words just have to be learned off-by-heart. Considering that there are over a million words in English, that’s a big ask!

There are lists of spelling rules out there (including a good one at www.dyslexia.org), but I thought I’d put down what I think are the most useful ones.

  1. I before E except after C when the sound is /ee/.
    This is the most famous rule of English spelling, but there are still exceptions! Hence, we write achieve with -ie- in the middle but also ceiling, with -ei- in the middle, as the /ee/ sound comes after the letter c. The most common exceptions are weird and seize.
  2. If you want to know whether to double the consonant, ask yourself if the word is like dinner or diner.
    One of the most common problems in spelling is knowing when to double a consonant. A simple rule that helps with a lot of words is to ask yourself whether the word is more like dinner or diner. Diner has a long vowel sound before a consonant and then another vowel (ie vowel-consonant-vowel, or VCV). Words with this long vowel sound only need one consonant before the second vowel, eg  shiner, fiver and whiner. However, dinner has a short first vowel and needs two consonants to ‘protect’ it (ie vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel, or VCCV). If the word is like dinner, you need to double the consonant, eg winner, bitter or glimmer. Just bear in mind that this rule doesn’t work with words that start with a prefix (or a group of letters added to the front of a word), so it’s disappoint and not dissapoint.
  3. If the word has more than one syllable and has the stress on the first syllable, don’t double any final consonant.
    This rule sounds a bit complicated, but it’s still very useful – particularly if it helps you spot your teacher making a mistake! We generally double the final consonant when we add a suffix starting with a vowel, such as -ing, but this rule means we shouldn’t do that as long as a) the word has more than one syllable and b) the stress is on the first syllable, eg focusing and targeted, but progressing and regretting. The main exceptions to this are words ending in -l and -y, hence barrelling and disobeying.
  4. When adding a suffix starting with a consonant, you don’t need to change the root word unless it ends in -y. This is among the easiest and most useful rules. There are loads of words ending in suffixes like -less, -ment or -ness, but spelling them should be easy as long as you know how to spell the root word, eg shoe becomes shoeless, contain becomes containment and green becomes greenness. However, words ending in -y need the y changing to an i, so happy becomes happiness.
  5. When adding a suffix starting with a vowel to a word ending in a silent -e, the e must be dropped unless it softens a c or a g.
    An e at the end of a word is often called a ‘Magic E’, as it lengthens the vowel before the final consonant, eg fat becomes fate. However, that job is done by the vowel at the start of the suffix when it is added to the word, so it needs to be dropped, eg race becomes racing and code becomes coded. The main exceptions come when the word ends with a soft c or g, which need to be followed by an -e, an -i or a -y to sound like /j/ and /s/ rather than /g/ and /k/. If the suffix doesn’t begin with an e- or an i-, we still need the –e to make sure the word sounds right, eg managing  is fine without the -e, as the i in -ing keeps the g soft, but manageable needs to keep the -e to avoid a hard /g/ sound that wouldn’t sound right.
  6. The only word ending in -full is full!
    There are lots of words ending in what sounds like -full, but the only one that has two ls at the end is full. All the other words – and there are thankfully no exceptions! – end in -ful, eg skilful, beautiful and wonderful.

 

Parts of speech

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When is a verb not a verb? When it’s a part of speech.

Parts of speech

English exams often ask questions about the ‘parts of speech’. This is just a fancy term for all the different kinds of words, but they’re worth knowing just in case. Just watch out for words such as ‘jump’, which can be more than one part of speech!

Noun: a word for a person, place or thing

  • abstract noun: a word to describe an idea, eg peace
  • common (or concrete) noun: a word for a thing or object, eg table
  • proper noun: the name of a person, place etc, eg Nick, London
  • collective noun: the name of a group of animals, eg herd or flock

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence with ‘the’ in front of the word. If it makes sense, it’s probably a noun, eg He looked at the ______.

Pronoun: a word that stands in for a noun

  • personal pronoun: a word that shows a person or thing, eg he, she, them
  • possessive pronoun: a word that shows the owner of an object, eg his, their
  • relative pronoun: a word that ‘relates’ to the subject just mentioned, eg who, that, which

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence with a verb after the word (but without ‘the’ or ‘a’ in front of it). If it makes sense, it’s probably a pronoun, eg ______ looked at the wall.

Verb: a doing word, eg jumped, was, pays

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence putting the word after a pronoun such as ‘he’. If it makes sense, it’s probably a verb, eg He ______ it or He ______ in the garden.

Adjective: a word that describes a noun or pronoun, eg green or young

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence putting the word between ‘the’ and a noun. If it makes sense, it’s probably an adjective, eg The ______ book lay on the table.

Article: a word that introduces a noun

  • definite article: the
  • indefinite article: a or an

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence with the word in front of a noun. If it makes sense, it’s probably an article, eg ______ book lay on the table.

Adverb: a word that describes an adjective, adverb or verb, usually ending in -ly, eg really or quickly

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence with the word after a verb. If it makes sense, it’s probably an adverb, eg He ran ______ around the garden.

Preposition: a word that shows the position in time or space, eg in, at or after

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence about placing something somewhere, putting the word before the location. If it makes sense, it’s probably a preposition, eg She put the book ______ the table.

Conjunction: a word that connects two sentences together (sometimes called a connective), eg and, but or because

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence with two clauses joined by the word. If it makes sense, it’s probably a conjunction, eg He looked at the problem ______ decided to do something about it.

Interjection: an outburst or word people say when they’re playing for time, eg hey, well, now or so

Tip: Make up a phrase or a sentence that someone might say, putting the word at the start, followed by a comma. If it makes sense, it’s probably an interjection, eg ______, can we go to the mall?

You can test yourself by reading any passage in English and going through it word by word, asking yourself what parts of speech they all are. Why not start with this article? See how fast you can go. If you’re not sure, ask yourself the questions in each of the tips shown above, eg if you think it’s a noun, can you put it into a sentence with ‘the’ in front of it?

Capital!

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I always sign Christmas and birthday cards with a capital ‘N’. It makes me feel like Napoleon…

Letter N

The three main things to check after writing anything are spelling, punctuation and capital letters, so when do you use capitals?

  1. For the important words in titles, either of individuals or pieces of writing, eg Chief Inspector of Schools or This Blog Post is Great!
  2. For proper nouns, eg Peter, Tuesday and Chelsea.
  3. For abbreviations, eg BBC (although acronyms you can actually pronounce only need one at the start, eg Nato, not NATO).
  4. For the first word in a sentence, eg This is a sentence.
  5. For the first word in direct speech, eg he said, “Hello.”
  6. The word “I”.

Speech marks

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Speech marks, inverted commas, quotation marks, quote marks, quotes, 66 and 99 – does any other punctuation mark have so many names or cause so much confusion…?!

speech marks

Writing a story means striking a balance between what I call The Three Ds: Drama, Description and Dialogue. I’ve read quite a few stories from my pupils in which nobody talks to anyone – which is a bit odd! – but you need to know the rules of punctuation before you start.

  • Start a new paragraph whenever the speaker changes or someone stops talking.
  • Put speech marks before and after the actual words spoken, eg “Hello,“ he said, NOT “Hello, he said.”
  • Start the first spoken word with a capital letter, eg she said, “This needs a capital letter,” NOT she said, “this needs a capital letter.”
  • Put either a comma, question mark, exclamation mark or colon between the speech and the ‘he said/she said’, eg “Don’t forget the comma,” he said, NOT “Don’t forget the comma” he said.
  • Put punctuation that belongs to the speech inside the speech marks, eg “The exclamation mark belongs inside!“, NOT “The exclamation mark belongs inside”! (The only exception comes with inverted commas, which look the same but are used with quotations rather than speech.)
  • Put a full-stop after the ‘he said/she said’ if it comes in the middle of the speech and the first part is a full sentence; otherwise, just put a comma, eg “This is a full sentence,” she said. “This is, too.” BUT “This is not a full sentence,” she said, “and nor is this.”
  • Don’t start the ‘he said/she said’ with a capital letter, even if it comes after a question mark or exclamation mark, eg “Don’t use a capital letter!” he shouted, NOT “Don’t use a capital letter!” He shouted.
  • If a speech lasts more than one paragraph, put speech marks before each paragraph and after the last one but NOT after the ones before.
  • Finally, don’t put ‘he said/she said’ after every single line of dialogue in a long conversation if it’s obvious who is speaking.

Sample questions

Format and put the correct punctuation and capital letters into the following lines of speech:

  1. I say john what time is it she asked
  2. hello she said my name is tara
  3. what are you talking about he cried I never said that
  4. hello he said whats your name Sarah she said Im Alan Nice to meet you you too
  5. I hate chocolate she said I only really eat chocolate ice-cream

Tips for the QTS numeracy test

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“If I’d known I’d have to go back to school, I’d never have become a teacher!” Back-to-school-blackboard-chalk

The QTS numeracy and literacy tests are not very popular, but trainee teachers still have to pass them before they can start teaching in the state sector, so I thought I’d try and help out. There is always more than one way of doing a Maths question, but I hope I’ll demonstrate a few useful short cuts and describe when and how they should be used. The point of short cuts is that, even though you may have to do more sums, they’ll be easier sums that can be done faster and more accurately. The numeracy test consists of two sections – mental Maths and interpreting charts – and I’m going to focus on the first of these.

Fractions to percentages – type 1

There are a number of typical types of questions in the numeracy test, and a lot of them involve multiplication – so knowing your times tables is an absolute must! One of the most common kinds of question involves converting fractions to percentages. These are just two ways of showing the same thing, but to answer these questions you’ll need to try different approaches. First of all, have a look to see if the denominator (or the number on the bottom of the fraction) is a factor or a multiple of 100. If it is, you can simply multiply or divide the numerator (the number on the top) and the denominator by whatever it takes to leave 100 on the bottom. Any fraction over 100 is just a percentage in disguise, so you just need to put the percentage sign after the numerator, eg what is the percentage mark if:

  1. a pupil scores 7 out of a possible 20?
    Answer: 20 x 5 = 100, so 7 x 5 = 35%.
  2. a pupil scores 18 out of a possible 25?
  3. a pupil scores 7 out of a possible 10?
  4. a pupil scores 9 out of a possible 20?
  5. a pupil scores 130 out of a possible 200?

Fractions to percentages – type 2

If the denominator is not a factor of 100, check if it’s a multiple of 10. If it is, you can convert the fraction into tenths and then multiply the top and bottom by 10 to get a fraction over 100, which, again, is just a percentage in disguise, eg what is the percentage mark if:

  1. A pupil scores 24 marks out of a possible 40?
    Answer: 40 ÷ 4 = 10, so 24 ÷ 4 = 6 and 6 x 10 = 60%.
  2. A pupil scores 12 marks out of a possible 30?
  3. A pupil scores 32 marks out of a possible 80?
  4. A pupil scores 49 marks out of a possible 70?
  5. A pupil scores 24 marks out of a possible 60?

Fractions to percentages – type 3

If neither of the first two methods works, that means you have to simplify the fraction. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to convert any common fraction into a percentage in your head. The most commonly used fractions are halves, quarters, fifths and eighths, so it’s worth learning the decimal and percentage equivalents off-by-heart, ie

  • ½ = 0.5 = 50%
  • ¼ = 0.25 = 25%
  • ¾ = 0.75 = 75%
  • ⅕ = 0.2 = 20%
  • ⅖ = 0.4 = 40%
  • ⅗ = 0.6 = 60%
  • ⅘ = 0.8 = 80%
  • ⅛ = 0.125 = 12.5%
  • ⅜ = 0.375 = 37.5%
  • ⅝ = 0.625 = 62.5%
  • ⅞ = 0.875 = 87.5%

To simplify the fractions, check first to see if the numerator goes into the denominator. If it does, you can simply divide both numbers by the numerator to get what’s called a ‘unit fraction’, in other words a fraction with a one on top. By definition, a unit fraction can’t be simplified, so then you just have to convert it into a percentage. If the numerator doesn’t go exactly, try the first few prime numbers, ie 2, 3, 5, 7 and perhaps 11. Keep dividing both numbers in the fraction by the lowest possible prime number, and you’ll eventually show the fraction in its lowest terms. (If you happen to find a bigger number you can use, that’s great, as it means you won’t need to do as many sums.) When you’re left with one of the common fractions in the list above, you just have to convert it into the correct percentage, eg what is the percentage mark if:

  1. a pupil scores 7 out of a possible 28?
    Answer: 7 goes into 28 four times, so the fraction is 1/4, which is 25%.
  2. a pupil scores 27 out of a possible 36?
    Answer: 27 doesn’t go into 36, but 3 does, so 27/36 = 9/12, but 9 and 12 are also divisible by 3, so that makes 3/4, which is 75%.
  3. a pupil scores 24 out of a possible 48?
  4. a pupil scores 8 out of possible 32?
  5. a pupil scores 9 out of a possible 24?

Multiplying three numbers involving money

There is often a ‘real world’ money problem in the QTS numeracy test. That usually means multiplying three numbers together. The first thing to say is that it doesn’t matter in which order you do it, eg 1 x 2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2 x 1. The next thing to bear in mind is that you will usually have to convert from pence to pounds. You could do this at the end by simply dividing the answer by 100, but a better way is to divide one of the numbers by 100 (or two of the numbers by 10) at the beginning and then multiply the remaining three numbers together, eg a number of pupils in a class took part in a sponsored spell to raise money for charity. The pupils were expected to get a certain number of correct spellings, and the average amount of sponsorship is shown for each. How many pounds would the class expect to raise for charity if the basic sum is:

  1. 20 x 30 x 5p?
    Answer: 2 x 3 x 5 = 6 x 5 = £30.
  2. 40 x 500 x 7p?
  3. 30 x 400 x 6p?
  4. 50 x 40 x 8p?
  5. 60 x 20 x 9p?

Division by single-digit numbers

This is what I call the ‘wedding planner problem’. There are three ways of doing this type of question:

  • Method A: Use the ‘bus stop’ method to divide the total number of guests by the number of seats per table – remembering to add one if there is a remainder.
  • Method B: Go straight to the end of your times tables by multiplying the number of seats by 12, then calculating the remainder and dividing by the number of seats per table, again remembering to add one if there is another remainder.
  • Method C: Use trial and error by estimating the number of tables needed using a nice, round number such as 5, 10 or 20 and working out the remainder as before.
  1. Dining tables seat 7 children. How many tables are needed to seat 100 children?
    Answer:
    Method A) 100 ÷ 7 = 14 r 2, so 14 + 1 = 15 tables are needed.
    Method B) 7 x 12 = 84, 100 – 84 = 16, 16 ÷ 7 = 2 remainder 2, 12 + 2 + 1 = 15 tables.
    Method C) 10 x 7 = 70, which is too small, 20 x 7 = 140, which is too big, 15 x 7 = 70 + 35 = 105, which is just right as there are only 5 seats to spare.
  2. Dining tables seat 6 children. How many tables are needed to seat 92 children?
  3. Dining tables seat 5 children. How many tables are need to seat 78 children?
  4. Dining tables seat 9 children. How many tables are needed to seat 120 children?
  5. Dining tables seat 6 children. How many tables are needed to seat 75 children?

Division by two-digit numbers

If the number of seats is outside your times tables, the best option is just to use trial and error, starting with 5, 10 or 20, eg

  1. It is possible to seat 40 people in a row across the hall. How many rows are needed to seat 432 people?
    Answer: 40 x 10 = 400, 432 – 400 = 32, so one more row is needed, making a total of 10 + 1 = 11 rows.
  2. It is possible to seat 32 people in a row across the hall. How many rows are needed to seat 340 people?
  3. It is possible to seat 64 people in a row across the hall. How many rows are needed to 663 people?
  4. It is possible to seat 28 people in a row across the hall. How many rows are needed to seat 438 people?
  5. It is possible to seat 42 people in a row across the hall. How many rows are needed to seat 379 people?

Percentages to fractions

This is a type of question that looks hard at first but becomes dead easy with the right short cut. All you need to do is to work out 10% first and then multiply by the number of tens in the percentage. Another way of saying that is just to knock one zero off each number and multiply them together, eg a test has a certain number of questions, each worth one mark. For the stated pass mark, how many questions had to be answered correctly to pass the test?

  1. ?/30 = 40%
    Answer: 3 x 4 = 12 questions (ie 10% of 30 is 3 questions, but we need 40%, which is 4 x 10%, so we need four lots of three, which is the same as 3 x 4).
  2. ?/40 = 70%
  3. ?/50 = 90%
  4. ?/80 = 70%
  5. ?/300 = 60%

Ratio – distance

There are two ways of converting between different units of distance from the metric and imperial systems:

  • Method A: Make the ratio into a fraction and multiply the distance you need to find out by that same fraction, ie multiply it by the numerator and divide it by the denominator. (Start with multiplication if doing the division first wouldn’t give you a whole number.)
  • Method B: Draw the numbers in a little 2 x 2 table, with the figures in the ratio in the top row and the distance you need to find out in the column with the appropriate units, then find out what you need to multiply by to get from the top row to the bottom row and multiply the distance you have to find out by that number to fill in the final box.
  1. 8km is about 5 miles. How many kilometres is 40 miles?
    Answer:
    Method A) 8:5 becomes 8/5, and 40 x 8/5 = 40 ÷ 5 x 8 = 8 x 8 = 64km.
    Method B)
    Miles                 km
    5                          8
    x 8
    40               8 x 8 = 64km
  2. 6km is about 4 miles. How many kilometres is 36 miles?
  3. 4km is about 3 miles. How many kilometres is 27 miles?
  4. 9km is about 7 miles. How many miles is 63 kilometres?
  5. 7km is about 4 miles. How many kilometres is 32 miles?

Ratio – money

You can use the same methods when converting money, except that the exchange rate is now a decimal rather than a fraction. Just remember that the pound is stronger than any other major currency, so there will always be fewer of them. It’s easy to get things the wrong way round, so it’s worth spending a couple of seconds checking, eg

  1. £1 = €1.70. How much is £100 in euros?
    Method A) 100 x 1.70 = €170.
    Method B)
    £                                      €
    1.00                              1.70
    x 100
    100                    1.70 x 100 = €170
  2. £1 = €1.60. How much is £200 in euros?
  3. £1 = €1.50. How much is €150 in pounds?
  4. £1 = €1.80. How much is €90 in pounds?
  5. £2 = €3.20. How much is £400 in euros?

Time – find the end time

The most useful trick to use here is rounding. If the length of a lesson is 45 minutes or more, then just round up to the full hour and take the extra minutes off at the end. This avoids having to add or subtract ‘through the hour’, which is more difficult. If the lessons are less than 45 minutes long, just work out the total number of minutes, then convert into hours and minutes and add to the start time, eg

  1. A class starts at 9:35. The class lasts 45 minutes. What time does the class finish?
    Answer: 9:35 + 1 hour – 15 minutes = 10:35 – 15 minutes = 10:20.
  2. A class starts at 11:45. There are three consecutive classes each lasting 25 minutes and then half an hour for lunch. What time does lunch finish?
    Answer: 11:45 + 3 x 25 + 30 = 11:45 + 75 + 30 = 11:45 + 1 hour and 15 minutes + 30 minutes = 13:30.
  3. Lessons start at 11:15. There are two classes each lasting 40 minutes and then lunch. What time does lunch start?
  4. Lessons start at 2:00 in the afternoon. There are four 50-minute classes with a 15-minute break in the middle. What time does the day finish?
  5. Lessons start at 9:40. There are two classes of 50 minutes each with a break of 15 minutes in between. What time do the classes finish?

Time – find the start time

It’s even more important to use rounding when working backwards from the end of an event, as subtraction is that bit more difficult, eg

  1. A school day finishes at 3:15. There are two classes of 50 minutes each after lunch with a break of 15 minutes in the middle. What time does lunch end?
    Answer: 3:15 – 2 hours + 2 x 10 minutes – 15 minutes = 1:15 + 20 minutes -15 minutes = 1:20.
  2. A school day finishes at 4:30. There are two classes of 40 minutes each after lunch. What time does lunch finish?
    Answer: 4:30 – 2 x 40 = 4:30 – 80 minutes = 4:30 – 1 hour and 20 minutes = 3:10.
  3. Lunch starts at 1:05. There are two classes before lunch of 55 minutes each. What time do the classes start?
  4. Lunch starts at 1:15. There are three classes before lunch of 45 minutes each. What time do the classes start?
  5. A school bus arrives at school at 8:45. It picks up 20 children, and it takes an average of four minutes to pick up each child. What time is the first child picked up?

Percentage to decimal

A decimal is a fraction of one unit, but a percentage is a fraction of 100 units, so, to convert from a percentage to a decimal, you just need to divide by 100, eg

  1. What is 20% as a decimal?
    Answer: 20 ÷ 100 = 0.2.
  2. What is 30% as a decimal?
  3. What is 17% as a decimal?
  4. What is 6% as a decimal?
  5. What is 48% as a decimal?

Multiplying decimals

Decimal points can be confusing, so the best way to do these sums is to take out the decimal point and put it back at the end. You just need to remember to make sure there are the same number of decimal places in the answer as in both numbers in the question, eg

  1. 1.5 x 1.5
    Answer: 15 x 15 = 10 x 15 + 5 x 15 = 150 + 75 = 225, but there are two decimal places in the numbers you’re multiplying together, so the answer must be 2.25.
  2. 3 x 4.5
  3. 4.7 x 8
  4. 7.5 x 7.5
  5. 2.5 x 6.5

Multiplying decimals by a power of 10

Because we have 10 fingers, we’ve ended up with a ‘decimal’ number system based on the number 10. That makes it really easy to multiply by powers of 10, because all you have to do is to move the decimal point to the right by a suitable number of places, eg one place when multiplying by 10, two when multiplying by 100 etc. (You can also think of it as moving the digits in the opposite direction.) This type of question is therefore one of the easiest, eg

  1. 4.5 x 10
    Answer: 45.
  2. 3.8 x 100
  3. 7.6 x 1000
  4. 4.6 x 100
  5. 3.5 x 10

Percentage of quantity

Finding a percentage is easy if it ends with a zero, as you can start by finding 10% (Method A). If you happen to know what the fraction is, you can also divide by the numerator of that fraction (Method B), so 20% is 1/5, so you just need to divide by five, eg

  1. Find 20% of 360
    Answer:
    Method A) 360/10 x 2 = 36 x 2 = 72.
    Method B) 360 ÷ 5 = 72 (or 360 x 2 ÷ 10 = 720 ÷ 10 = 72).
  2. Find 20% of 45
  3. Find 30% of 320
  4. Find 60% of 60
  5. Find 80% of 120

Multiplication

Just because this is the ‘mental Maths’ section of the test doesn’t mean that you can’t work things out on paper, and these simple multiplication sums can be done like that. Alternatively, you can use ‘chunking’, which means multiplying the tens and units separately and adding the results together, and the short cut for multiplying by five is to multiply by 10 and then divide by two, eg

  1. 23 x 7
    Answer: 20 x 7 + 3 x 7 = 140 + 21 = 161.
  2. 42 x 5
    Answer: 42 x 10 ÷ 2 = 420 ÷ 2 = 210
  3. 34 x 6
  4. 56 x 8
  5. 34 x 8

Short division

Again, working these sums out on paper is probably quicker (and more reliable), although the easiest way to divide by four is probably to halve the number twice, and the short cut for dividing by five is to multiply by two and then divide by 10.

  1. 292 ÷ 4
    Answer: 292 ÷ 2 ÷ 2 = 146 ÷ 2 = 73.
  2. 345 ÷ 5
    Answer: 345 x 2 ÷ 10 = 690 ÷ 10 = 69.
  3. 282 ÷ 3
  4. 565 ÷ 5
  5. 432 ÷ 4

Ratios

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Hundreds of years ago, it was traditional to put dragons on maps in places that were unknown, dangerous or poorly mapped. Ratios are one of those places…

Here be ratios...!

Here be ratios…!

A ratio is just a model of the real world, shown in the lowest terms, but answering ratio questions can be just as scary as meeting dragons if you don’t know what you’re doing. The key to understanding ratios is to work out the scale factor. This is just like the scale on a map. If a map is drawn to a scale of 1:100,000, for instance, you know that 1cm on the map is the same as 100,000cm (or 1km) in the real world. To convert distances on the map into distances in the real world, you just need to multiply by the scale factor, which is 100,000 in this case. (You can also go the other way – from the real world to the map – by dividing by the scale factor instead.)

To work out the scale factor in a Maths question, you need to know the matching quantities in the real world and in the model (or ratio). Once you know those two numbers, you can simply divide the one in the real world by the one in the ratio to get the scale factor. For example:

If Tom and Katie have 32 marbles between them in the ratio 3:1, how many marbles does Tom have?

To answer this question, here are the steps to take:

  1. Work out the scale factor. The total number of marbles in the real world is 32, and the total in the ratio can be found by adding the amounts for both Tom and Katie, which means 3 + 1 = 4. Dividing the real world total by the ratio total gives 32 ÷ 4 = 8, so the scale factor is 8.
  2. Multiply the number you want in the ratio by the scale factor. If Tom’s share of the marbles in the ratio is 3, then he has 3 x 8 = 24 marbles.

The matching numbers in the real world and the ratio are sometimes the totals and sometimes the individual shares, but it doesn’t matter what they are. All you need to do is find the same quantity in both places and divide the real world version by the ratio version to get the scale factor. Once you’ve done that, you can multiply any of the ratio numbers to get to the real world number (or divide any real world number to get to the ratio number). Different questions might put the problem in different ways, but the principle is the same.

One complication might be having two ratios that overlap. In that case you need to turn them into just one ratio that includes all three quantities and answer the question as you normally would. For example:

If there are 30 black sheep, and the ratio of black to brown sheep is 3:2, and the ratio of brown to white sheep is 5:4, how many white sheep are there?

This is a bit more complicated, but the basic steps are the same once you’ve found out the ratio for all three kinds of sheep. To do this, we need to link the two ratios together somehow, but all the numbers are different, so how do we do it? The answer is the same as for adding fractions with different denominators (or for solving the harder types of simultaneous equations, for that matter): we just need to multiply them together. If we were adding fifths and halves, we would multiply the denominators together to convert them both into tenths. Here, the type of sheep that is in both ratios is the brown one, so we simply have to make sure the numbers of brown sheep in each ratio (2 and 5) are the same by multiplying them together (to give 10). Once we’ve done that, we can combine the two ratios into one and answer the question. Here goes:

  • Ratio of black sheep to brown sheep = 3:2

Multiply by 5

  • Ratio of black sheep to brown sheep = 15:10
  • Ratio of brown to white sheep = 5:4

Multiply by 2

  • Ratio of brown to white sheep = 10:8
  • Therefore, ratio of black sheep to brown sheep to white sheep = 15:10:8

Now that we have just one ratio, we can answer the question by following exactly the same steps as before:

  1. Work out the scale factor. The total number of black sheep in the real world is 30, and the total in the ratio is 15. Dividing the real world total by the ratio total gives 30 ÷ 15 = 2, so the scale factor is 2.
  2. Multiply the number you want in the ratio by the scale factor. If the number of white sheep in the ratio is 8, then there are 8 x 2 = 16 white sheep.

Simple!

Here are a few practice questions:

  1. One hundred paintings have to be selected for an art exhibition. If the ratio of amateur paintings to professional paintings has to be 2:3, how many amateur paintings and professional paintings have to be selected?
  2. The ratio of brown rats to black rats is 3:2. If there are 16 black rats, how many brown rats are there?
  3. Peter has 20 blue pens. How many red pens must he buy if the ratio of blue to red pens has to be 2:3?
  4. There are 35 children in a class and 15 are boys. What is the ratio of boys to girls?
  5. There are 15 girls and 12 boys in a class. What is the ratio of girls to boys? Give your answer in its simplest form.
  6. A newspaper includes 12 pages of sport and 8 pages of TV. What is the ratio of sport to TV? Give your answer in its simplest form.
  7. Anna has 75p, and Fiona has £1.20. What is the ratio of Anna’s money to Fiona’s money in its simplest form?
  8. Sam does a scale drawing of his kitchen. He uses a scale of 1:100. He measures the length of the kitchen as 5.9m. How long is the kitchen on the scale drawing? Give your answer in mm.
  9. A recipe to make lasagne for 6 people uses 300 grams of minced beef. How much minced beef would be needed to serve 8 people?
  10. A recipe for flapjacks requires 240g of oats. This makes 18 flapjacks. What quantity of oats is needed to make 24 flapjacks?
  11. Amit is 12 years old. His brother, Arun, is 9. Their grandfather gives them £140, which is to be divided between them in the ratio of their ages. How much does each of them get?
  12. The angles in a triangle are in the ratio 1:2:9. Find the size of the largest angle.
  13. In a certain town, the ratio of left-handed people to right-handed people is 2:9. How many right-handed people would you expect to find in a group of 132 people?
  14. Twelve pencils cost 72p. Find the cost of 30 pencils.
  15. Jenny buys 15 felt-tip pens. It costs her £2.85. How much would 20 pens have cost?
  16. If three apples cost 45p, how much would five apples cost?
  17. Sam is 16 years old. His sister is 24 years old. What’s the ratio of Sam’s age to his sister’s age? Give your answer in its simplest form.
  18. A map scale is 1:20000. A distance on the map is measured to be 5.6cm. What’s the actual distance in real life? Give your answer in metres.
  19. A recipe for vegetable curry needs 300 grams of rice, and it feeds 4 people. How much rice would be needed for 7 people?
  20. £60 is to be divided between Brian and Kate in the ratio 2:3. How much does Kate get?

Athens

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Teaching Greek children is like watching France play rugby: you never know what you’re going to get…

The Stoa of Attalos marble colonnade and ceiling

Stoa of Attalos: the Athenian version of the local mall

 

I just spent two weeks in Greece preparing a Greek boy and his twin sisters for 10+ and 12+ entrance examinations at a school in England. Highlights included spending a long, sunny weekend at a holiday home in Lagonissi, spending another long, sunny weekend skiing near Delphi – I wonder if the oracle saw that one coming! – and seeing the Parthenon every day from my hotel balcony.

Political refugees take many forms, but, personally, I prefer shipping magnates fleeing with their adorable (if strong-willed) families from Communist governments in the Mediterranean…

Red Xmas tree star with bokeh lights

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Red Xmas tree star with bokeh lights

Red star at night, photographer’s delight..

Christmas is a time for baubles, lights, golf clubs and a Nikon D800…

The idea

I live in an Art Deco mansion block in Putney, and every year the porters put up a tree in the entrance hall. Last year, I took some pictures of some of the baubles, inspired by an email from one of the photographic magazines about how to capture bokeh lighting. This year, the tree and the baubles were different, so I decided to have another go.

The location

Ormonde Court, Upper Richmond Road, London SW15 6TW, United Kingdom, around 2100 on 12 December 2014.

The equipment

  • Nikon D800 DSLR camera
  • Nikon AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens
  • Nikon SB-910 Speedlight flash
  • Manfrotto 190XProB tripod with 496RC2 universal joint head
  • Hähnel HRN 280 remote release.

I’ve just managed to remortgage my flat in Notting Hill, so I’ve been investing in a few photographic supplies. Ever since a German called Stefan took a magnificent shot of Old Faithful at night using flash, I’ve wanted a proper flashgun. Well, now I have one. I bought the Nikon SB-910 Speedlight a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived just in time for this shoot. I didn’t know whether I’d need it or not, but I was prepared to experiment.

The settings

  • Manual ISO 100
  • f/5.6
  • 1 second
  • 105mm
  • Tungsten white balance
  • Single-point auto-focus

The technique

In the last of these posts, I mentioned how I’d got used to taking a tripod with me in almost all circumstances, and last night was no exception. Last year, I was generally pleased with my shots of the baubles, but the ISO was far too high. I was using my tripod, funnily enough, but to hold the bauble rather than my camera! This year, I decided I would definitely mount the camera on the tripod, but that left me with nothing to hold the baubles. I thought about using a light stand from my flash kit, but I needed something horizontal rather than vertical so that I could hang the decorations from it. I then had the idea of using my golf clubs. I could stand the bag in the lobby and balance one of the clubs on top, held in place by the other clubs.

As it turned out, I’d forgotten that the bag would be at an angle of 45 degrees, so my original plan didn’t work, but I simply pulled my 4-iron half-way out and hung the first bauble from that. It was a silver reindeer, but the green wire loop wasn’t very long, and I wouldn’t have been able to get the shots I wanted without the golf club getting in the frame. I needed a piece of string. I thought about going back to my flat, but leaving my golf clubs and my camera unattended in the entrance hall didn’t seem like a sensible idea! Fortunately, I was wearing trainers, so I just used one of the laces. It took a few gos to get each bauble to point in the right direction and remain still – particularly as there was a stream of curious residents opening the front door on their way home from work! – but I managed in the end. Phew!

I took lots of pictures of the silver reindeer, a red bauble with a spiral pattern on it and the red star shown above, and I played around with the flash settings to try to make the background a bit darker. Sadly my new flash was so powerful that I couldn’t manage that – even with -3.0EV of exposure compensation! There might’ve been a better way, but it was the first time I’ve ever used a flashgun, so I’m still a newbie.

The main problem I had in taking the shots was actually getting enough depth-of-field. The reindeer was fine, but the round baubles and even the star were proving a nightmare. If I focused on the front of the bauble, the metal cap and wire loop were out of focus, but, if I focused on those, the rest of the bauble was out of focus. I’m an absolute stickler for sharpness in my images, so I wasn’t sure what to do. In the end, I stopped down a little bit and hoped that f/5.6 would be a small enough aperture to keep everything acceptably sharp. I tried ‘chimping’ (or checking the shots on the LCD screen) a few times, but it was tricky to tell. My problem was a kind of Catch-22: the three variables controlling depth-of-field are normally the focal length, the aperture and the relative distances of the camera to the subject and the subject to the background. I couldn’t change to a wide-angle lens, as I needed to limit the background to just the Christmas tree; I couldn’t change to a much smaller aperture without making the bokeh circles of the blurred Christmas lights in the background too small; and I couldn’t change the relative positions of the camera, bauble and tree without changing the composition completely. Hmm… As you can see from the shot above, the two arms on the right of the red star didn’t turn out completely sharp, but it was ‘good enough for Government work’. Shutterstock obviously didn’t accept it – they’re very hot on sharpness! – but I did win an award on Pixoto for the sixth best image uploaded to the Christmas category yesterday!

Post-processing

I made three changes to this shot:

  1. I had the camera on ‘Tungsten’ white balance, as I’d just read somewhere that I should use the amber filter on the flashgun when shooting indoors in order to avoid a clash of different light sources. However, it turned out that the shot looked a lot warmer with the ‘Flash’ white balance, and that was just the look I was after at Christmastime.
  2. A lot of my images end up being quite dark, and I’m not sure whether it’s just because I’m lucky to spend a lot of time in very sunny places or whether there’s a problem with my camera! In this case, I actually had to push the exposure up by +2EV in Aperture to make it look like all the others. I have a feeling that’s because I changed from f/2.8 to f/5.6 to get more depth-of-field but forgot to lengthen the shutter speed to compensate. Silly me…
  3. I was desperately trying to frame the shot perfectly so I wouldn’t have to crop, but the balance of the bauble with the ‘negative space’ on the right wasn’t quite right, so I cropped in slightly to position the star a third of the way into the frame.

Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight

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Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight

Close-up of golden eagle head with catchlight

I’m a photographer (among other things), and this is the first of a series of posts about my favourite photographs. I’ll tell you how I took them and break down the shot into the idea, the location, the equipment, the settings, the technique and any post-processing.

The idea

When I took this shot, I was at a Battle of Hastings re-enactment at Battle Abbey in Sussex. I was there to take pictures of the battle scenes between enthusiasts dressed up as Normans and Saxons, and I had no idea there was going to be a falconry display until I bought my ticket and was given a flyer with the plan for the day.

The golden eagle is my favourite bird (isn’t it everyone’s?!), so I was very excited to be able to see one in action. The falconers from Raphael Historical Falconry put on a couple of displays with a variety of birds, including a gyrfalcon and a Harris hawk, but the golden eagle was the highlight. Afterwards, I wandered over to their tent, and I was able to get within just a few feet of all the birds. The falconer was happy to chat with the spectators with a bird on his arm (so to speak!), and later he fed and watered the birds outside. That gave me the chance to set up my tripod and get a few good close-ups, and this was the best of the lot.

The location

Battle Abbey, High Street, Hastings and Battle, East Sussex TN33 0AD, United Kingdom, around 1500 on 11 October 2014.

The equipment

  • Nikon D800 DSLR camera
  • Sigma 50-500mm F4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM lens
  • Manfrotto 190XProB tripod with 496RC2 universal joint head
  • Hähnel HRN 280 remote release.

I was a bit worried about using my ‘Bigma’ to take this picture, as I hadn’t been very impressed with it on my trip to Spitsbergen to see the polar bears. Admittedly, the bears were usually a few hundred yards away, and no zoom lens is at its best when it’s at its longest focal length, but I was disappointed that my shots were so soft. As a result, I did a manual focus check and discovered that the calculated auto-focus fine tune setting was a whopping -12! Armed with this new improvement to the sharpest tool in my box, I was ready for anything…

PS They call it the ‘Bigma’ as it’s made by Sigma, and it’s enormous!

The settings

  • Auto ISO 110
  • f/9
  • 1/250
  • 500mm
  • Daylight white balance
  • Single-point auto-focus

I had the camera on Manual with ISO on Auto, which I thought was appropriate for a day when lots of things would be happening, and I’d be taking candid shots without much opportunity to sit down and check my settings. However, I should probably have set the ISO to its optimum value of 100 for this shot, as I had plenty of time.

The technique

I’m generally a travel and wildlife photographer, but I normally don’t use a tripod as it gets in the way and doesn’t work too well in a Land-Rover moving at 40mph! However, I learnt a new perspective from a professional photographer called Mark Carwardine. He happened to be on a cruise to Spitsbergen that I went on a few months ago, and he was always carrying around his tripod with the legs fully extended – even on the Zodiac inflatables that we used to land on the islands. I thought to myself, If he can do it, so can I! After that, I’ve tried to use a tripod wherever possible. I love really sharp wildlife shots, and a 36.3-megapixel DSLR and a tripod make a winning combination.

Another important thing about wildlife shots is to get down to the level of the animal or bird you’re shooting. You can see from this shot that I’m right at eye-level with the eagle, and that gives the sense of power and intimacy I was looking for.

Finally, I’ve learnt from a couple of portrait shoots the value of the ‘catchlight’. This is the reflection of the light source that you see in the eye of your subject. It’s just as important with wildlife as with people, and I was lucky enough to get a break in the clouds that allowed the sun to provide the perfect catchlight. Lucky me!

Post-processing

I changed from a PC to a Mac a few years ago, so I do all my post-processing in Aperture. I suppose I should upgrade to Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw or Photoshop, but iPhoto was the default image-processing software on the Mac, and Aperture was the cheapest upgrade!

I only had two changes to make to this shot:

  1. Even at 500mm, I still wasn’t quite close enough for the bird’s head to fill the frame, so I had to crop in later. I’ve found from experience that 6.3 megapixels is the minimum size that the major online photo libraries accept, so I never go below 6.4 MP (to avoid rounding errors), and that’s the new size of this file.
  2. In the end, the automatic ISO setting was close enough to the optimum of 100, but the shot was slightly overexposed due to the dark colours of the eagle’s feathers and the grassy background, so I had to reduce the exposure by 0.5EV.

Working with fractions

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Me again...

Me again…

People don’t like fractions. I don’t know why. They’re difficult to begin with, I know, but a few simple rules will help you add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Adding and subtracting

Adding and subtracting are usually the easiest sums, but not when it comes to fractions. If fractions have the same denominator (the number on the bottom), then you can simply add or subtract the second numerator from the first, eg 4/5 – 3/5 = 1/5. If not, it would be like adding apples and oranges. They’re just not the same, so you first have to convert them into ‘pieces of fruit’ – or a common unit. The easiest way of doing that is by multiplying the denominators together. That guarantees that the new denominator is a multiple of both the others. Once you’ve found the right denominator, you can multiply each numerator by the denominator from the other fraction (because whatever you do to the bottom of the fraction you have to do to the top), add or subtract them and then simplify and/or convert into a mixed number if necessary, eg 2/3 + 4/5 = (2 x 5 + 4 x 3) / (3 x 5) = (10 + 12) / 15 = 22/15 = 1 7/15.

  1. Multiply the denominators together and write the answer down as the new denominator
  2. Multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second and write the answer above the new denominator
  3. Multiply the numerator of the second fraction by the denominator of the first and write the answer above the new denominator (after a plus or minus sign)
  4. Add or subtract the numerators and write the answer over the new denominator
  5. Simplify and/or turn into a mixed number if necessary

Sample questions

  1. 1/5 + 2/3
  2. 2/7 + 3/5
  3. 4/5 – 2/3
  4. 7/8 – 3/4
  5. 5/8 – 2/3

Multiplication

This is the easiest thing to do with fractions. You simply have to multiply the numerators together, multiply the denominators together and then put one over the other, simplifying and/or converting into a mixed number if necessary, eg 2/3 x 4/5 = (2 x 4) / (3 x 5) = 8/15.

  1. Multiply the numerators together
  2. Multiply the denominators together
  3. Put the result of Step 1 over the result of Step 2 in a fraction
  4. Simplify and/or turn into a mixed number if necessary

Sample questions

  1. 1/5 x 2/3
  2. 2/7 x 3/5
  3. 4/5 x 2/3
  4. 7/8 x 3/4
  5. 5/8 x 2/3

Division

Dividing by a fraction must have seemed like a nightmare to early mathematicians, because nobody ever does it! That’s right. Nobody divides by a fraction, because it’s so much easier to multiply. That’s because dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by the same fraction once it’s turned upside down, eg 2/3 ÷ 4/5 = 2/3 x 5/4 = (2 x 5) / (3 x 4) = 10/12 = 5/6. You can even cut out the middle step and simply multiply each numerator by the denominator from the other fraction, eg 2/3 ÷ 4/5 = (2 x 5) / (3 x 4) = 10/12 = 5/6.

  1. Multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second
  2. Multiply the numerator of the second fraction by the denominator of the first
  3. Put the result of Step 1 over the result of Step 2 in a fraction
  4. Simplify and/or turn into a mixed number if necessary

Sample questions

  1. 1/5 ÷ 2/3
  2. 2/7 ÷ 3/5
  3. 4/5 ÷ 2/3
  4. 7/8 ÷ 3/4
  5. 5/8 ÷ 2/3

Simplifying fractions

By the way, to simplify a fraction, try dividing the denominator by the numerator first, eg 9/18 = 1/2. If that works, you don’t have to do anything else. If not, try dividing by the first few prime numbers, ie 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11. You don’t need to try the other numbers, because they’re all multiples of the primes, so they won’t work if the others don’t, eg 4 won’t work if 2 doesn’t work. Ideally, the quickest way would be to divide the numerator and denominator by the highest common factor (or HCF), but you don’t know what that is at the beginning, so it would take time to work it out. This way is a good compromise.

  1. If possible, divide the numerator and denominator by the numerator
  2. If the numerator doesn’t go exactly, start dividing by the smallest prime number that will go into both numbers, starting with 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11
  3. Repeat Step 2 until the only number that goes into the numerator and denominator is 1

Sample questions

  1. Simplify 14/28
  2. Simplify 8/24
  3. Simplify 4/12
  4. Simplify 27/36
  5. Simplify 30/50

Turning improper fractions into mixed numbers

To turn an improper fraction into a mixed number, simply divide the numerator by the denominator to find the whole number and then put the remainder over the original denominator and simplify if necessary, eg 9/6 = 1 3/6 = 1 1/2.

  1. Divide the numerator by the denominator
  2. Write down the answer to Step 1 as a whole number
  3. Put any remainder into a new fraction as the numerator, using the original denominator
  4. Simplify the fraction if necessary

Sample questions

  1. What is 22/7 as a mixed number?
  2. What is 16/5 as a mixed number?
  3. What is 8/3 as a mixed number?
  4. What is 18/8 as a mixed number?
  5. What is 13/6 as a mixed number?

Turning mixed numbers into improper fractions

To turn a mixed number into an improper fraction, multiply the whole number by the denominator of the fraction and add the existing numerator to get the new numerator while keeping the same denominator, eg 2 2/5 = (10 + 2)/5 = 12/5.

  1. Multiply the whole number by the denominator of the fraction
  2. Add the answer to the existing numerator to get the new numerator
  3. Write the answer over the original numerator
  4. Simplify if necessary

Sample questions

  1. What is 2 2/7 as an improper fraction?
  2. What is 3 2/3 as an improper fraction?
  3. What is 4 1/4 as an improper fraction?
  4. What is 5 1/5 as an improper fraction?
  5. What is 3 2/9 as an improper fraction?

There you go. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Cold Turkey

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Working hard as usual...

Working hard as usual…

Pool, beach or hammock? Hammock, beach or pool? Hmm…

That was the decision that faced me every day during my teaching assignment in Turkey. I was staying at Club Isil in Torba, near Bodrum, for six weeks to teach three Kazakh brothers and their cousin. They were seven, seven, 11 and 14 years old, and I was there to teach each of them English or Maths for an hour a day. I only worked a maximum of five days a week, and the cousin was only there for a month, so I had plenty of time to do my own thing. Sometimes that can be a bit difficult on a residential assignment, as you don’t know anyone apart from your clients, and there’s no guarantee of where you’ll be staying or what facilities or transport will be available. Fortunately, my Kazakh clients put me up at a five-star all-inclusive beach resort called the Isil Club, so I had the choice of pool, beach or hammock every afternoon, plus the use of wi-fi throughout the grounds and the opportunity to participate in a host of sporting activities, including tennis, volleyball and Flyboarding.

Stairway to heaven

Stairway to heaven

Every weekday morning, I would have breakfast from the buffet on the terrace and walk to the front of the hotel, where I’d get picked up at 0845 by a chap in a golf cart and dropped off at my clients’ pair of luxury houses in the grounds of the next door Vogue Hotel. The first time I walked down the steps to the villas, I thought I’d walked on to the set of Beverly Hills 90210. Each villa had an infinity pool on the terrace, with a view looking out over a sweeping sunlit Mediterranean bay dotted with the odd luxury schooner or motor yacht. Inside, the houses were both chock full of marble and gold leaf, and there was a constant stream of staff to keep the place looking immaculate and look after our every need. I’d teach for three or four hours and then hitch a lift back to my hotel with one of the staff or even one of the boys. It’s not often I get driven home by an 11-year-old pupil, but that’s what happens when he’s given a Renault Twizy for his birthday…!

I got along pretty well with the boys, although they were rather reluctant students, and their mothers generally left me to my own devices. I’m told that’s fairly typical of clients from the old Soviet Union, but it’s just a bit disconcerting when nobody comes to pick you up and you think you’ve been sacked until you get a belated text to say it’s just someone’s birthday!

I quickly settled into a routine of teaching in the morning and then reading the paper online, sunbathing and watching sport and movies on my laptop for the rest of the day. My main problem was trying to do too many things at once. It would’ve been nice to be able to sunbathe with my laptop out on the terrace or alongside the various incarnations of Bambi and Thumper on the dock, but it was too hot and bright. It was two weeks before I saw my first cloud, so I didn’t even have the excuse of bad weather to stay indoors. Everywhere I go these days, it always seems to be 35° – either in Centigrade or Fahrenheit!

The Isil Club wasn’t quite so luxurious as the Vogue – where I was greeted by a couple of beautiful girls and offered a free cocktail when I arrived from the airport – but it still offered everything I could possibly want. I had to switch rooms initially, but that was only because of a glitch in the wi-fi signal, and I ended up in the ideal spot. My front door opened on to the main bar and reception area, but I also had French windows giving access to a grassy lawn at the back (where I found the hammock!), and the restaurant and water sports centre were within easy walking distance. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all available from a buffet out on the terrace, and there was a wide selection of salads, hot dishes, deserts and anything else you might fancy. The hotel was run on an all-inclusive basis, so I never had to pay for anything, and it was very tempting to eat far too much. After a couple of weeks, though, I decided to eat what I actually liked rather than everything in sight!

All you can eat...

All you can eat…

The facilities were fabulously comprehensive, including a huge swimming pool, volleyball and tennis courts, artificial five-a-side pitches, table tennis and pool tables, a sauna and spa and a water sports centre down by the dock equipped with catamarans, Jet Skis, banana boats and Flyboards. (There was even a zoo next door, although it was even smaller than the one in Hong Kong!) I hardly ever go on beach holidays, so it should’ve come as no surprise when I swam two lengths of the pool with my iPhone in my pocket! That put me off swimming for the rest of the trip, and I didn’t even do many of the other activities – even though I used to love sailing when I was a boy. However, I’d always wanted to try Flyboarding, and I booked a lesson in the final week. I was strapped into boots attached to what looks a bit like a snowboard, except with two nozzles for the water jet on the underside. There was also a red hose or pipe hooked up to a Jet Ski, and that was what provided the power. It was pretty difficult to get the hang of it, but I did manage to hover around ten feet off the water a couple of times for a few seconds. I asked Yusuf to take some pictures, but the memory card in my camera stopped working, so I don’t have anything to show for it! Typical…

Fortunately, I did manage to take a few shots myself. I recently took up photography fairly seriously, so I’m always looking for great photo ops, and I was very excited about the idea of getting pictures of the instructors. I ended up getting to know one of the instructors quite well, and he was an expert Flyboarder. The first time I saw him, he was soaring 20 feet into the air then diving into the water, only to shoot up into the air again and dive again. It was spectacular! The only problem was trying to work out when he was due to go out. I asked Yusuf to let me know by text, but he never did, so I ended up camping out on the terrace with my laptop, checking the dock every few minutes to see whether the Flyboard had moved from its usual spot. At least it got me out of the house – and the photos were worth waiting for…

Flyboarder diving in perfect high backlit arc

(This is not me)

Dive! Dive!

Dive! Dive!

I took lots of shots of Yusuf, a couple of the other instructors and a few holidaymakers trying it for the first time. If you want to sell pictures of people online (as I do), you have to get a model release from everybody in the shot, so I did a deal with everyone: you sign the model release, and I’ll give you all the photos for free. Yusuf was particularly chuffed. “Many photographers ask to take my picture,” he told me once, “but it would not be the same as you.”

The other big chance I had to take pictures came when the American singer/songwriter Akon gave a concert at the Vogue Hotel. One of my pupils told me about it, and I went along to check it out. It turned out to be a very professional gig – just like something you’d expect to see in a big outdoor arena – and it was a great chance to take some good close-up shots. The grounds were so big that there was plenty of room, even quite near to the stage, so I was lucky to be there. The good thing about going to a private concert at a five-star hotel is that you don’t find any of the usual drawbacks of live music. You don’t have to queue up to get in, you can get as close as you like, and you don’t even need a ticket!

Akon

Akon

When I wasn’t taking pictures or staring at a laptop screen, I tried to meet a few people in the resort, but it was always difficult. I asked a couple of girls to dance and complimented another couple on their dresses, but it never got me anywhere. Eventually, I gave up and started taking my lunch and dinner plates back to my room rather than eating out on the terrace beside the buffet. However, I did go along to the regular scheduled volleyball and tennis tournaments, and that paid off during the last couple of weeks of my stay, when I met a group of Belgians who were very keen on volleyball. They played every morning and evening and invited me to join them, so I went along and got to know them pretty well. There were Goodness knows how many Belgians and other Francophone tourists in the resort, so I’m glad I could speak French. The social ostracism is the worst part of any residential assignment abroad, so it was good to be able to have a chat with a few people over the age of 14!

All in all, I had a very good trip. The clients were happy, I came back with a proper tan for the first time since I ‘retired’ at 29, and I tried out something I’ve always wanted to do. I also managed to take hundreds of pictures. What could be better? The only disappointment hit me when I got back home to the UK and found that all the sunny beaches and beautiful girls in bikinis had disappeared. My turkey was cold after all…

 

 

Tweets from Turkey

Sunbathing

Sunbathing in Bodrum is like watching French films – you end up thinking breasts aren’t special at all. I need someone to set me straight…

I saw a dolphin playing in the sea and someone having sun cream rubbed in by two beautiful Thai girls. I’m not sure which impressed me more…

When a woman spends 5 mins putting on her bikini top, should you a) ignore her, b) offer your help or c) ask the topless woman next to you?!

The area around the swimming pool here is like a walrus haul-out in the Arctic, except the creatures are 700lbs lighter (in most cases)…

They may not be as glamorous as polar bears in the Arctic, but there’s still a place for French blondes in bikinis called Aurélie…

Food

I’m the least observant person in the world. It’s taken me a week to find the muesli! Now, where’s the champagne and caviare…

One day, I’ll get bored of dining on the terrace while watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, but it won’t be this week…

This hotel is so posh they put soy sauce in a sherry glass. Impractical, but classy.

I’m going to write a book called The All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Diet. It’ll have the same hundred recipes on every page…

For dinner tonight, I was tempted by the ‘turkey chest’ with ‘potetoes’ or ‘fish from the owen’, but I chose pizza instead. Easier to spell…

The French/Belgians

We almost had a Casablanca moment today. When a hundred Germans are singing German drinking songs around the pool, it can only end badly.

It’s a sad day when a pretty French girl in a bikini asks if she can lie next to you on the sun lounger but then calls you ‘vous’. Sigh…

I just heard a French woman say, “Un, deux, trois – cheese!” to her children. Photography, the universal language…

It’s hard to be one of the lads when you’re playing volleyball with Frenchmen. I call them ‘tu’, but I’m so old they have to call me ‘vous’!

“Due to the Belgium National Feast, the 21st. of July, we would like to invite you to a cocktail at the pool, today at 19:30pm. Isil Club”

TV

I’m in the middle of a Transformers marathon, and I’m feeling more and more admiration for director Michael Bay (and Megan Fox, obviously)…

Living abroad means watching every sporting event live, so I now have three windows open for the cricket, the golf and the motor racing…

Great to see Jon Favreau’s Chef. I haven’t seen such a fine feel-good foodie film since Tampopo and Babette’s Feast!

Internet

Why don’t web pages from The Daily Telegraph load properly in Turkey? Is the paper still being punished for its Gallipoli coverage…?

When your profile is being viewed by 63-year-old women, you know you’ve reached the bottom of the online dating pool…

Sport

Middle-aged guys should be banned from water parks. I think I’ve broken my ankle…!

I just lost an air rifle competition by 14 points to 10. If we’d been using AK-47s, it would’ve been a different story…

When I won the singles and doubles matches to win the tennis today, everyone just walked off. It’s the opposite of ‘all must have prizes’…!

That’s the first time I’ve ever had to score a tennis match in French. I suppose it’s better than volleyball in Russian.

Flyboarding is just like snowboarding, except you have 20 feet further to fall! Ouch…

Photography

I went to the zoo today – if you can call it that. The Vogue Hotel is having a competition with Hong Kong for the world’s smallest zoo…

I spent last night on the beach with three cats named Hobie, shooting the stars and watching shooting stars.

I’ve just realised from my photographs which way the stars rotate in the northern hemisphere. Any guesses…?

I just offered to send someone a few photos, and he told me he didn’t have an email address! I didn’t know what to say…

Here I am, watching Lois & Clark and the US PGA on my laptop, sitting on the terrace at midnight while my camera takes photos of the stars…

Thank God that’s over. No more sunshine, no more beaches, no more pretty girls in bikinis. I’m really, really happy to be home. Really…

Other

Turkey’s the only place I know where storms don’t involve either rain or even clouds…

I just saw Akon perform last night at the Vogue. I think in future I’ll only go to private concerts at five-star hotels…

Does anyone want an iPhone? I have one that swam two lengths of the pool with me this afternoon…

I was shaken awake by an earthquake this morning…

 

Hong Kong? Phooey!

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Angled view of Central Plaza at sunset

Central Plaza at sunset

When they built Hong Kong, they put the sun in the wrong place. It’s always either behind a building, hidden by a cloud or on the wrong side of the island to see a decent sunset. Having said that, I did arrive during the monsoon season, which didn’t help! I was there for six weeks from April to June 2014, teaching four families various subjects including English, Maths, Science and tennis. All the families were very hospitable, lending me iPhones, chauffeuring me around and inviting me regularly for lunch and dinner. They also had a few diary issues, so I ended up teaching twice as many students as I was supposed to… The tuition agent who had arranged the job had given me a handy introductory guide to Hong Kong, but it took a while to get used to the place. I felt like Alice in Wonderland in my bathroom, where everything was six inches lower than I was used to, and the bottle labelled ‘Drink me’ was replaced by a dispenser of ‘horse oil! The water also left me feeling queasy, but the worst part was finding my way around. The apartment block was right next to the Grand Hyatt and Renaissance hotels, and there were two different entrances, north and south. The client who was putting me up in her flat had kindly sorted out a SIM card, wi-fi dongle and an Octopus card for the MTR, but I felt like Captain Oates whenever I left the building. Would I ever find my way home again…?! I had two objectives in Hong Kong. First of all, I was obviously there to keep my clients happy. After that, I saw it as a great opportunity to take photographs. I deliberately limited my lessons to around four or five hours a day in an effort to maximise my chances of picture-taking. The only problem was the weather. I had one sunny day on my first day off, which I used to go up to the Peak, which has spectacular views of Victoria Harbour, but I didn’t see blue skies again until my last week. As a result, my daily routine revolved around anything I could do within the confines of my apartment block. Fortunately, one of my clients had lent me the use of a very nice one-bed flat in Wan Chai, complete with golf driving range, two tennis courts and three outdoor and indoor swimming pools, but none of that was very appealing when my iPhone predicted thunderstorms every day of the week! Instead, I generally stayed at home during the morning and early afternoon. I read the papers online (using a very handy 4G dongle a client lent me), watched British sport when I could (thank Goodness for www.vipboxasia.co!) and spent a lot of time taking and processing my photographs before taking one of the cheap and cheerful taxis in the early evening to take me to my first lesson. The main ideas I’d gleaned from the travel guide and a quick trawl on the web were: climbing up to Victoria Peak to see the panoramic views of the harbour; going on an open-top bus ride; catching the Star Ferry to Kowloon to watch the Symphony of Lights (a regular son et lumière show put on by most of the office blocks around the harbour); going to Happy Valley to see the regular Wednesday night horse races; wandering around one of the ‘wet markets’ that sell fish, meat and other goods on the street; visiting one or two of the outlying islands; and perhaps going over to the Chinese mainland. I never made it to China proper, as a meeting with another agency was cancelled, but I did do all the rest. My first photographic excursion was a trip to the Peak. I was very lucky to have sunshine on my first day off, and I ended up spending all day up there. There are two buildings at the top, which both look a bit like alien space ships: the Peak Galleria and the Peak Tower.

Victoria Harbour from the Peak

Victoria Harbour from the Peak

The views from both during the day were spectacular, but it got better and better as night fell. My only mistake was in leaving 20 minutes before the Symphony of Lights was due to start! The open-top bus ride was a great way to see all the extraordinary architecture in Hong Kong. The island is a strange mixture of Gibraltar, New York and Monaco – very hilly, full of skyscrapers and offering several switchbacks akin to Loew’s Corner for the wannabe Formula 1 driver. As I drove around with an audio guide pointing out all the landmarks in my ear, I was constantly taking pictures left, right and centre. It took hours to transfer them to my laptop and edit them all, but I was happy with one or two of the more abstract shots.

Grey skyscraper on a grey day

Grey skyscraper on a grey day

The Symphony of Lights happens every evening at around eight o’clock on both sides of Victoria Harbour. Dozens of skyscrapers switch on their lights in time to a musical soundtrack that gets piped through speakers on the shoreline, and there are even lasers fired from some of the rooftops. I caught the Star Ferry to Kowloon and watched it from the Avenue of Stars, which is just a posh name for the concrete waterfront. I chose that side of the harbour deliberately, as most of the iconic buildings are on the other side of the water on Hong Kong island, including the distinctive M Pei-designed China Bank Tower.

Hong Kong Symphony of Lights from Kowloon

Hong Kong Symphony of Lights from Kowloon

I thought getting a night off to go to Happy Valley was going to be a problem, but one of my clients helpfully cancelled a lesson one Wednesday, which allowed me to spend the whole evening there. Happy Valley must be one of the few racecourses in the world that’s located slap bang in the middle of a city, but it certainly makes for a unique backdrop. There were thousands of people in the floodlit arena, most of them dressed up in their glad rags as if they were about to quaff a bottle of champagne in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, but the fare on offer wasn’t always so classy. I took a few shots of one very attractive woman in a red dress having an Ed Miliband moment with a cheeseburger and a packet of ketchup! The racing itself was as you’d imagine, but it was still rather strange to see Chinese jockeys wearing the traditional silks.

Jockey in purple and white riding racehorse

Jockey in purple and white riding racehorse

A ‘wet market’ in Hong Kong is just a food market on the street that ends up having to be hosed down to get rid of all the detritus at the end of the day. I went to the one on Bowrington Road and benefited from the delightful insouciance of the locals when it comes to having their picture taken. There are so many cameras and iPhones being used over there that the last thing people worry about is some random bloke taking yet another picture! Some of the items on sale were certainly interesting, and the live fish flapping about on the slabs were a magnetic draw. Once food becomes waste at the end of the day, though, it undergoes an ugly transformation, and I was reminded of a Jonathan Swift poem, A Description of a City Shower, that compares the cleansing effect of the rain to the Old Testament flood:

“Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown’d puppies, stinking sprats, all drench’d in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.”

Smiling Chinese fishmonger

Smiling Chinese fishmonger

I was keen to get to some of the outlying islands in Hong Kong, but the weather rather limited my options. However, I had a friend over there who lived with his family on Lantau, and we arranged to have lunch with a few of his friends. We went for dim sum, which is rather a local tradition on a Sunday, and then spent the rest of the day together. A few weeks later, his wife organised a 40th birthday party at a beach bar at Pui O, so I decided to use that as an excuse to explore the island properly.  I’d cancelled all my lessons to go to the party, and I decided to make a day of it. The big attraction – literally! – on Lantau is the Tian Tan or Big Buddha, and I reached it by taking the cable car from the MTR stop in Tung Chung. The ride up wasn’t that spectacular, but I had a personal reason for going. A girlfriend once sent me a postcard of the Big Buddha when she was in Hong Kong, and she said it reminded her of me because I close my eyes when I laugh! I wasn’t convinced when I saw it with my own eyes, but I took plenty of pictures just in case.

Big Buddha in profile

Big Buddha in profile

Lantau has changed a lot in the last few years, and it’s very difficult to find any indigenous peasant culture – everyone seems far too well off! However, I’d heard about the stilted houses in Tai O, and I wanted to see them for myself, so I took a taxi there from the Big Buddha. Tai O used to be a busy fishing village, but it’s turned into a bit of a tourist trap. When I went, it was just gearing up for a dragon boat race, and there were dozens of little stalls by the river selling seaside delicacies such as ‘super fish balls’, ‘fresh cuttlefish’ and ‘crisp fried fish skin’!

Pleasure boat passing moorings of stilted houses

Pleasure boat passing moorings of stilted houses

After wandering round the village and stopping off for a quick ‘lime and salt’ drink (when in Rome…!), I took the bus to Pui O for the party. At the bus stop, I met an American art student and had a good chat with her while we were waiting for the bus and then on the bus itself. It was nice to have a ‘normal’ conversation with someone for a change, but I had to jump off pretty quickly when I realised I was close to the resort. I had plenty of time on my hands, but it was quite a stroke of luck that I went down there early, as there were three or four kite surfers out in the bay. They were all very good, and I was happy to spend an hour and a half just taking pictures of their jumps and tricks as the sun went down over the headland.

Close-up of female kite surfer getting air

Close-up of female kite surfer getting air

Mavericks was a pretty good venue, and the party went off well enough, but that marked the end of my stay in Hong Kong. All in all, I enjoyed my six weeks over there. It was not too long and not too short. My clients were very kind and friendly, and I got along very well with them and their families. Hong Kong is to China as Goa is to India: if you can’t face the real thing, it will ease you gently into the local culture while providing all the trappings of Western civilisation to keep you sane. You may see the occasional amusing sign, such as ‘Please wrap spittle’, or see the odd Ferrari burst into flames when you’re on the bus, but it’s definitely worth a visit.

Lost in translation

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Huh...??

Huh…??

My best experience in Moscow could easily have been my worst.

“Would you like to come to dinner with us at Café Pushkin and then see the Spasskaya Tower international military music festival in Red Square?”

“Yes, I’d be delighted.”

“Shall we meet you at the restaurant at six thirty?”

Oh, dear. My heart sank. It was my first time in Moscow, and I had only one hour to make sense of the Moscow Metro system all on my own. My clients had kindly given me the equivalent of an Oyster card and an iPhone with a local SIM card in it, but I had to get to the station first. The nearest one was more than 15 minutes’ walk away, so I decided to try and get the bus. The only problem was that I didn’t know whether my smart card would work. Fortunately, it did. The next problem was knowing which platform to use in the Metro. I don’t speak Russian, and all the signs and the names of the stations were in Cyrillic, so it was no easy task! Even when I got on the right train, it was very difficult to know where I was. There are so few signs on the Metro stations that it was almost impossible to see one and decipher the station name as the train flew past. Even the announcements over the PA system were no help, as I didn’t even know how to pronounce the names of the stations en route! I eventually had to make do with counting them. That worked out fine, and I got off at the right one, only to get lost again. I thought I’d be safe with Google maps, but the network was so slow that my phone wasn’t telling me where I was but where I’d been five minutes earlier! The weather was so poor that I couldn’t navigate by the sun, and there were so many major roads and sliproads that it was impossible to cross them without taking the underground subway – which was even more confusing! When I finally reached the restaurant, I was lucky enough to see my clients on the steps. Phew! Never again…

The food at Café Pushkin was delicious, and my clients Dimitri and Yana encouraged me to try the local specialities and generously paid for my meal. Before we left for the festival, their son Boris showed me round the gorgeous antique interior. He was 12 years old, and I had come to Moscow for three weeks in September 2013 to help him prepare for his entrance exams at various private schools in England. Everything had happened very quickly. From being told about the job to getting on the plane had only been seven days! During that time, the only real obstacle had been getting a visa. In return for a couple of hours online and a visit to the Embassy (involving an obligatory lie about being in full-time employment), I was given my Russian visa name. This is similar to your pornstar name, except it’s decided by the Russian Embassy. Mine was NIKOLAS UILLIAM ДЭИЛ, by the way…

Despite the travel nightmares, that evening with Dimitri, Yana and Boris turned out to be the highlight of my trip to Moscow. After dinner, we walked to Red Square from the restaurant and spent the next couple of hours watching a succession of international marching bands play music and go through their parade ground drills in front of the spectacular backdrop of a floodlit St Basil’s Cathedral.

Better Red than dead

Better Red than dead

It was my first ever visit to Red Square, and it was quite an introduction! I was keen to take as many photos and videos of the event as I could, and Boris was doing the same sitting next to me. By a freakish coincidence, he had almost exactly the same camera as I did (the Nikon D800E), so we had plenty to discuss that night and for the rest of the trip when it came to photography. This might give you some idea of the spectacle…

 

The only disappointing thing about the evening was that the family decided to leave early. I only discovered this later, but there was a firework display at the end of the show. How spectacular would that have been to see fireworks over St Basil’s?! Sadly, I missed out, and I don’t think I’ll ever have the chance again…

The bad news continued on the photography front when the weather stayed cloudy, misty, rainy and miserable for the entire trip. I had been keen to see St Petersburg and the onion-domed churches of Zagorsk and elsewhere, but there was no point in those conditions. One result of that was that I didn’t have very much to occupy my time. There were a couple of people that I’d planned to see, but it wasn’t possible in the end, so I spent a lot of time in my hotel room. I got on with Boris and his parents reasonably well, and Yana very kindly provided me with lunch most days (although I could have wished for something other than borscht and black bread almost every day!), but it was a bit lonely sometimes. I’d have been pulling my hair out if I hadn’t found a free VPN service that gave me 24/7 access to Sky Sports! My agent Andrei was also just a quick Skype call away to sort out any problems or just to pass the time. I really appreciated that, and we met up for a curry when I got home to cement our friendship.

I did take a few photographs while I was over there. I’d seen a nearby church out of my hotel window, so I walked over there on my day off and captured the onion domes for posterity.

"It's like an onion..."

“It’s like an onion…”

There was another old church just across the road in a residential gated community, but the security guards at the entrance wanted a bribe to let me in!

In the absence of any exciting landscapes or architecture to shoot, I decided to be a bit more creative. I was up on the 23rd floor of the Astrus Hotel, so I got a good view down Leninsky Prospekt. I took a few ‘miniatures’ of the tower blocks first…

Mini Moscow

Mini Moscow

…and then I went a bit ‘arty’ with my zoom!

Trabants and Mercedes as you've never seen them before...

Trabants and Mercedes as you’ve never seen them before…

The only other pictures I took were of one of the receptionists downstairs called Polina. She bizarrely felt she had to ask permission from her colleagues before she would agree, but we ended up having a good chat. We’re even friends on Facebook now, so perhaps I should’ve plucked up the courage to talk to her a bit earlier. Who knows what might’ve happened? You know what they say about Moscow girls…

I have a few other memories of my trip: the phenomenal upload speed of my hotel’s DSL connection (23.36Mbps!); the water pressure in the shower – which made me feel like a rioter being hosed down by a water cannon; seeing a picture of Boris Johnson on his bike on the bedroom wall of my student Boris; finding a Russian medal on the kitchen table that Dimitri had won for his service to the motherland; seeing an abandoned car in the middle lane of Leninsky Prospekt; getting through the Moscow traffic honk-a-thon every morning, when my driver would get so close to the other cars that the parking alarm would regularly go off; and trying to negotiate the return of my laundry in English with an old Russian woman speaking German!

All in all, I’m glad I had the opportunity to go to Moscow. The family were very kind and generous and easy to talk to, and I made a good friend in Andrei. It’s also another place I’ve been able to tick off my bucket list. Now, where next, I wonder…?!

Back in the USSR

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"You don't know how lucky you are, boy"

“You don’t know how lucky you are, boy”

Before I went to Belarus, I was warned it would be like going back to the Soviet Union: brutalist architecture, statues of Karl Marx and a hankering after the Communist era. In fact, I ended up teaching English to a very nice couple called Mikhail and Natasha, who were very generous and hospitable to me and had a far from typically Russian (or Belarusian) attitude to politics and economics. She ran a chain of pharmacies, he worked in the agriculture business, and neither of them could understand their friends’ passion for Russian imperialism.

I flew out in March 2014 after a last-minute scare when the agency tried to bring forward my flight with only three days’ notice! Fortunately, that was resolved happily enough, and I was met at Warsaw airport by a driver who would take me across the border to Brest (aka Brest-Litovsk). The city didn’t have its own airport, so it was a choice between driving across the border from Poland or flying to Minsk and facing an even longer trip by car. When we arrived at the border, big men with big guns stopped the car to check our papers, and we waited to be allowed through. An hour and a half later, we were still waiting! That has to be the worst border crossing I’ve ever had in my life…

My driver took me to the Hermitage, which was the best place in town (I checked: it was €83 a night – or free if you knew the owner!), but I had a shock when I unpacked my bag and tried to boot up my laptop. LOT Polish Airlines had managed to drop it from a great height, and was so battered and bruised that the only thing it could do was beep forlornly! (In hindsight, I should perhaps have put it in my carry-on rather than my checked luggage, but I had all my photographic equipment in my camera bag, and there wasn’t really enough room…) I met Mikhail and Natasha in the hotel restaurant and told them what had happened, and Mikhail very kindly offered to ask his IT department to have a look at my laptop and see if it could be fixed. Natasha even lent me her MacBook until eventually I got mine back – minus a memory card slot that was too damaged to fix…

I was in town to teach Mikhail and Natasha, but they generously farmed me out to a couple of friends of theirs and even Natasha’s mother at one point. (Same iPhones, just different brand of luxury German saloon…) We quickly slipped into a daily rhythm. I’d start the day by having breakfast in the hotel. On the way to the restaurant, I’d always pass an old German shop till that looked rather photogenic. I planned to come down and take a few pictures of it one day, but it wasn’t until my final week that I eventually got round to it. Unfortunately, I left the ISO rating on 1600 by mistake, so I had to do the shoot all over again, but I was rewarded when the users of Pixoto voted this my best photo ever!

My best photo ever...?

My best photo ever…?

Breakfast was a struggle, not just because of the rather limited Eastern European rations but because of having to listen to Lana del Rey’s latest album on a loop every morning. I asked at reception if they had any other CDs, but I was told that there was an exhibition of paintings in the foyer, and the artist had made it a condition that Lana del Rey would be played all the time to set the right mood! One day, the barman tried to compete by playing drum ‘n’ bass at full volume to drown out the sound of Miss del Rey, but it didn’t last…

At nine o’clock, I’d leave the musical torture chamber and walk over to my clients’ apartment, where I would teach Mikhail for an hour and a half and then swap to Natasha for a similar period when she got home from work. I’d then have a couple of hours to myself before meeting them both for a (very) late lunch at Caffè Venezia, which Mikhail always paid for. They knew the owner, and it was right next door to Mikhail’s office, so it was his favourite place. There would always be someone to talk to, and the Italian owner knew enough English to be able to keep up a good conversation. After lunch, Olga would pick me up for her lesson, and I’d spend an hour and a half at her house before getting dropped off at my hotel again. In the evenings, Mikhail and Natasha would usually invite me to dinner, either at a restaurant or at their place. Mikhail explained that there were only three decent restaurants in town – Caffè Venezia, Times Café and Jules Verne – and we ate at all of them. Natasha was also an excellent cook, and Mikhail had a very well stocked wine fridge, so a typical meal would consist of smoked salmon and caviare washed down with champagne followed by salade de magret de canard and lightly grilled sea bass accompanied by a rather nice Puligny-Montrachet! We also had dinner with Olga and Sergei one evening, and I had the novel experience of helping Olga and Natasha make ‘pierogi’, a kind of semi-circular dumplings similar to tortellini, which we filled and wrapped. I also had the rather dubious honour of nibbling on black bread topped with carpaccio of pig fat! Well, nothing tastes too bad after four glasses of vodka…

Another constant part of our routine was talking about the Crimea. The annexation by Russia was on the news every day, and we inevitably ended up talking about it as part of our lessons and over lunch or dinner. Today, Crimea. Tomorrow, the Ukraine. The day after that, perhaps Belarus. You don’t quite realise the difference in your countries’ political traditions until you hear stories about living next door to the Russian bear. Natasha told me a couple about her own family. Once, when Gorbachev was briefly threatened by a palace coup in 1991, she and Mikhail had actually emigrated to Poland for the day – just in case perestroika and glasnost had come to an end and the borders had been closed. How many times do we feel we have to leave the country before a British General Election?! She also told me about her grandmother, who decided to take her family to Poland back in the 1920s, when it was briefly possible to leave the old Soviet Union. She was waiting on the station platform, ready to catch the train, when she suddenly realised her wallet had been stolen! With all her money gone, they couldn’t possibly afford to leave home – and their family history was changed beyond recognition for the next 60 years…

Mikhail and Natasha were also very sporty, and they were kind enough to include me in their regular plans. We went for a long (and very energetic!) walk around the city before dinner one night, and I even had games of volleyball and tennis with Mikhail. I hadn’t played volleyball for about 30 years, so I rather embarrassed myself on court, but at least I beat him at doubles – although that was probably because I was playing with the coach! We also spent the final Saturday cycling in the Białowieża Forest with Olga and Sergei, which is now a National Park and World Heritage site that spans the Belarusian/Polish border a few miles north of Brest. The forest is great for cycling as it has a grid of roads from which cars are banned. We drove there in an old van that was big enough to hold all the bikes. Once we’d arrived, I was given a mountain bike, and we set off into the woods. Our first stop was the zoo, which was a series of enclosures containing all the local animals to be found in the forest (and a few others). This was my chance to take a few pictures of my very first Russian bear, together with wolves, ostriches and a family of European bison.

Close-up of a wolf head in profile

Close-up of a wolf head in profile

We then cycled around the forest for a couple of hours and had a picnic lunch at the residence of Father Frost – a kind of Santa’s Grotto but without the snow! I always like a civilised picnic, but this was the first time I’d had one with pancakes, venison and samogon – or Russian moonshine…

I always try to take advantage of my foreign residential jobs to take pictures of the local landscapes, flora and fauna, so it was good to have a chance to use my camera again. There weren’t many photogenic sights to be seen in Brest, apart from a few onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches, but I found inspiration in the animals. The following day, I went walkabout and visited the Brest fortress, which is where the first battle was fought in Hitler’s 1941 invasion of Russia. To commemorate the occasion, they’ve installed an enormous block of stone with a Russian soldier’s head carved out of it called the Courage Monument. CNN once ran a story placing it first in a list of the world’s ugliest monuments, but they swiftly had to remove it when the Russians and Belarusians took offence!

Eyes of soldier on Brest fortress monument

Eyes of soldier on Brest fortress monument

That evening, I walked back into town to find St Simeon’s cathedral, which I’d first seen on my walk with Mikhail and Natasha. Russian Orthodox churches all have the distinctive ‘onion domes’, often painted gold, and they can look spectacular under floodlights.

St Simeon cathedral in Brest at night

St Simeon cathedral in Brest at night

I have to say that I really enjoyed my fortnight in Belarus. It was sometimes quite hard work spending so much time with my clients, as I had to concentrate on their English (and my own) even when we were just chatting together, but I was very lucky to be placed with a couple of similar ages with such similar interests and values. When people come home from holiday, they often say, “The people were very friendly,” but I’m never quite convinced. After my trip to Belarus, I can safely say I’ve changed my mind. Whatever the economic, political and military history of the country, I’ve never been looked after quite so well, and I have to thank Mikhail and Natasha for showing me the best of Belarus. I’m also even more thankful to have had the English Channel to protect us from invasion. Our history would have looked very different without it…!

 

Number sequences

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2-4-6-8 ain't never too late...

2-4-6-8 ain’t never too late…

Number sequences appear in Nature all over the place, from sunflowers to conch shells. They can also crop up either in Maths or Verbal Reasoning, and both are essential parts of 11+ and other school examinations. The trick is to be able to recognise the most common sequences and, if you find a different one, to work out the pattern so that you can find the missing values (or ‘terms’).

Common sequences

Here are a few of the commonest number sequences. For each one, I’ve given the rule for working out the nth term, where n stands for its position in the sequence.

Even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8 etc… Rule: 2n
Odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7 etc… Rule: 2n – 1
Powers of 2: 2, 4, 8, 16 etc… Rule: 2ⁿ
Prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7 etc… Rule: n/a (each number is only divisible by itself and one)
Square numbers: 1, 4, 9, 16 etc… Rule: n²
Triangular numbers: 1, 3, 6, 10 etc… Rule: sum of the numbers from 1 to n
Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3 etc… Rule: n₋₂ + n₋₁ (ie each successive number is produced by adding the previous two numbers together, eg 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3)

Here are a few questions for you to try. What are the next two numbers in each of the following sequences?

  1. 14, 16, 18, 20…
  2. 9, 16, 25, 36…
  3. 3, 6, 12, 24…
  4. 7, 11, 13, 17…
  5. 5, 8, 13, 21…

Working out the pattern

The best way to approach an unfamiliar sequence is to calculate the gaps between the terms. Most sequences involve adding or subtracting a specific number, eg 4 in the case of 5, 9, 13, 17 etc. Sometimes, the difference will rise or fall, as in 1, 2, 4, 7 etc. If you draw a loop between each pair of numbers and write down the gaps (eg +1 or -2), the pattern should become obvious, enabling you to work out the missing terms.

  • If the missing terms are in the middle of the sequence, you can still work out the pattern by using whatever terms lie next to each other, eg 1, …, 5, 7, …, 11 etc. You can confirm it by checking that the gap between every other term is double that between the ones next to each other.
  • If the gaps between terms are not the same and don’t go up (or down) by one each time, it may be that you have to multiply or divide each term by a certain number to find the next one, eg 16, 8, 4, 2 etc.
  • If the gaps go up and down, there may be two sequences mixed together, which means you’ll have to look at every other term to spot the pattern, eg 1, 10, 2, 8 etc. Here, every odd term goes up by 1 and every even term falls by two.

Generating a formula

At more advanced levels, you may be asked to provide the formula for a number sequence.

Arithmetic sequences

If the gap between the terms is the same, the sequence is ‘arithmetic’. The formula for the nth term of an arithmetic sequence is xn ± k, where x is the gap, n is the position of the term in the sequence and k is a constant that is added or subtracted to make sure the sequence starts with the right number, eg the formula for 5, 8, 11, 14 etc is 3n + 2. The gap between each term is 3, which means you have to multiply n by 3 each time and add 2 to get the right term, eg for the first term, n = 1, so 3n would be 3, but it should be 5, so you have to add 2 to it. Working out the formula for a sequence is particularly useful at 13+ or GCSE level, when you might be given a drawing of the first few patterns in a sequence and asked to predict, say, the number of squares in the 50th pattern. You can also work out the position of the pattern in the sequence if you are given the number of elements. You do this by rearranging the formula, ie by adding or subtracting k to the number of elements and dividing by 𝒳. For example, if 3n +2 is the formula for the number of squares in a tiling pattern, and you have 50 squares in a particular pattern, the number of that pattern in the sequence = (50-2) ÷ 3 = 48 ÷ 3 = 16.

Quadratic sequences

If the gap between the terms changes by the same amount each time, the sequence is ‘quadratic’, which just means there is a square number involved. The formula for a quadratic sequence is 𝒳n² ± k, where 𝒳 is half the difference between the gaps (or ‘second difference’), n is the position of the term in the sequence and k is a constant that is added or subtracted to make sure the sequence starts with the right number, eg the formula for 3, 9, 19, 33 etc is 2n² + 1. The differences between the terms are 6, 10, 14, so the second difference is 4, which means you need to multiply the square of n by 4 ÷ 2 = 2 and add 1, eg for the first term, n = 1, so 2n² would be 2, but it should be 3, so you have to add 1 to it.

Geometric sequences

If each term is calculated by multiplying the previous term by the same number each time, the sequence is ‘geometric’. The formula for the nth term of a geometric sequence (or progression) is ar(n-1), where a is the first term, r is the multiplier (or ‘common ratio’) and n is the position of the term in the sequence, eg the formula for 2, 8, 32, 128 etc is 2 x 4(n-1). The first term is 2, and each term is a power of 4 multiplied by 2, eg the fourth term = 2 x 4(4-1) = 2 x 43 = 2 x 64 = 128.

Here are a few questions for you to try. What is the formula for the nth term in each of the following sequences?

  1. 14, 16, 18, 20…
  2. -1, 3, 7, 11…
  3. 4, 6, 10, 16…
  4. 9, 7, 5, 3…
  5. 2, 6, 18, 54…

Learning the right words

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French. Nuts...

French. Nuts…

One of the frustrations about learning French is that you’re not given the words you really need to know. I studied French up to A-level, but I was sometimes at a complete loss when I went out with my French girlfriend and a few of her friends in Lyon. I was feeling suitably smug about following the whole conversation in French…until everyone started talking about chestnuts! At the end of almost every story, someone would mention them. Now, it’s not often that chestnuts crop up in conversation (!), so I thought I’d check with Isabelle later on. When I asked her about it, she said her friends hadn’t been talking about chestnuts at all. When I pressed her, she said they hadn’t been saying ‘marrons’ but ‘marrant’ – which is slang for ‘funny’! The next day, I started a list of all the slang words – or ‘argot’ – I came across, and within a few weeks I had over a hundred.

This is just a trivial example of what anyone knows who has lived and spoken French among French people: the words they use are almost never the ones you find in Longmans Audiovisual French! More often than not, they are ‘argotique’ or slang. For example, a house is not a ‘maison’ but a ‘baraque’, and a car is not a ‘voiture’ but a ‘caisse’ or a ‘bagnole’. In addition, there are rules about when you can use slang and when you can’t. I got into real trouble with my girlfriend when I threw a few slang words into my conversation with an old family friend of hers. I was just trying to practise my ‘argot’, but Isabelle told me in no uncertain terms that you NEVER, EVER use slang with someone you address as ‘vous’!

Pupils spend a long time being taught vocabulary for a given set of situations and environments – doing the shopping, going to school, going to the cinema etc – but they are rarely given a simple list of the most common words. You can easily find such a list online (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:French_frequency_lists/1-2000), and learning those words strikes me as much more useful than wasting time with ‘le muguet’ (or lily-of-the-valley), which I remember cropping up in my own Longmans text book!

French Argot English
une pretexte baroque a bizarre or flimsy pretext
une benne a skip — where you dump things
merde s**t – can mean almost anything you want
le chef boss
la bagnole car
la bite, bitte c**k
cool cool
le pénaliste criminal lawyer
au tapis down (as in dead)
laisse tomber! drop it! Leave it!
stupéfiants, stupes drugs
s**t drugs, such as cannabis resin – as in “cent grams de s**t!”
gagner du fric earn money
une escort girl escort girl
la femme de compagnie escort girl
poilu First World War veteran
magouiller avec f**k with
marrant funny
le gentleman gentleman
le flingue gun
tu as plongé? have you started using [drugs] again?
c’est du bluff he’s bluffing
la baraque house
j’ai des comptes à régler I have scores to settle
je sais ce que vous traversez I know what you’re going through
illico immediately?
embrouillé in a fine mess
mediatique media-friendly, media-savvy
la crise d’angoisse panic attack
le proxénétisme pimping, profiting from prostitution
dégagez! piss off!
le merdeux s**thead
bouché stupid
point final that’s it, end of story
la salope the bitch, the disloyal woman
larguer to dump
fumer to kill
les chiottes toilets
t’as reçu un pain you got punched in the face