Beth Coates - Homework for Grown-ups: Everything You Learnt at School... and Promptly Forgot

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Epub ISBN: 9781407020266

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Copyright E. Foley & B. Coates
Cover Illustration Christopher Wormell

Illustrations by Chris Lyon. Chris Lyon 2008. All rights reserved.

E. Foley & B. Coates have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This edition reissued in Vintage in 2018
First published in Vintage in 2012

First published in hardback by Square Peg in 2008

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

CONTENTS

E. Foley and B. Coates were star pupils who always got their homework in on time. Based in London, they now check other people's homework and grammar for a living.

The Sunday Times number one bestseller. An informative and entertaining book of old-school knowledge for adults.

Don't know your isosceles from your equilateral?

Forgotten what actually happened in 1066?

Perplexed by past participles?

Fret no longer. Homework for Grown-Ups covers everything from algebra and prime numbers, English grammar and the Big Bang theory, and an easy way to remember the order of the planets and Britain's kings and queens, to art, Latin, P.E., home economics, and much more. Packed with essential facts, figures and theories, along with fun but challenging test papers to keep you on your toes, it might just equip parents to handle their child's homework without humiliation.

Shakespeare for Grown-ups

Advanced Homework for Grown-ups

Homework for Grown-ups Quiz Book

INTRODUCTION

Where did it all go? Everything we learned at school now seems a distant memory. We sit slack-jawed when our children ask us which planet comes after Jupiter, or what the capital of Bulgaria is, or what quid pro quo actually means. Have you ever found yourself making up your own version of Pythagoras theorem in order to avoid the humiliating scorn of your offspring? Have you ever started blithely on a list of Henry VIIIs wives, while your little one looks up at you full of admiration, only to find yourself with too many Catherines? Have you ever succumbed to the temptation to use the embarrassing get-out clause Ask your father/mother?

Even simple queries like Why is the sky blue? have many parents scratching their heads. All we can remember is that we used to know the answer. A recent study revealed that even though most pupils learn French for five years, by the time they are adults the sum total of their knowledge stretches to at best four words. In these days of high-speed Internet connections and calculators on mobile phones, we rarely have to use the information that was drummed into us in our schooldays. The good news is that its still all there. And even better, its surprisingly easy to revive those dormant grey cells and hold your head up with pride when youre next asked to help with homework.

Homework for Grown-ups is a revision guide for adults that will put you back on track. We aim to entertain you as well as exercise your brain and equip you with the basics, so you can impress your friends or handle homework without humiliation.

Homework for Grown-ups is organised in ten chapters, each covering a school subject: English, Maths, Home Economics, History, Science, Religious Education, Geography, Classics, Physical Education and Art. After reading it we hope youll be as sharp as a tack, as bright as a button and as clever as when you were a fresh-faced youngster in grey socks and a blazer.

Wouldnt it be great to slip a couple of Latin phrases into a conversation with your boss, or pontificate on the qualities of a tetrahedron at a cocktail party, or list the kings of England in your head while the dentist is giving you a filling? Homework for Grown-ups is the way to get back your self-respect and also show the kids a thing or two.

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Englishn. the language of England, now used in many varieties throughout the world

Oxford Concise English Dictionary

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within

A LFRED , L ORD T ENNYSON (180992), In Memoriam A. H. H.

Our mother tongue is a rich and flexible beast. It contains such beauteous and varied words as tatterdemalion, Pass me the potassium permanganate). The shapes and sounds of our words are hugely varied, often depending on whence our magpie language has picked up specific terms: the vowel-heavy, melodic anaesthesia, echo and chaos from the ancient Greek; the concise, muscular belch, night and cow from our Anglo-Saxon forefathers; and the sleek cuisine, blonde and rendezvous from the French, for example.

In fact, the history of the British Isles is written in our words, from Viking borrowings (bark, cake, akimbo) to the souvenirs of empire (pukka, bungalow, trek). Today English is an official language of more than fifty countries including Madagascar, Belize, Fiji and Singapore and is spoken by more people on Earth than any other. The Oxford English Dictionary contains definitions for over 500,000 words in current use (some studies record over 900,000 English words), and the average person probably uses about 1/60 of these in their lifetime. More impressively, Shakespeares vocabulary is reckoned to have run to over 24,000 words. In order to appreciate properly the wonderful works of literary giants like Shakespeare, or indeed to create your own, it is vital to have a basic grasp of how the language works. Grammar provides the building blocks from which the castles of great literature are built.