English vs Maths: Compulsory Contest
English and maths take up most of our timetables. They are the most different subjects and are, for some reason, compulsory. It is said that you are either a maths person or an English person so I decided to put that theory to the test by taking the most mathematically intelligent people at RHS and pit them against the most Linguistically intelligent. Ladies, gentlemen, everyone…. Your teachers.
Gouldy vs Corbould
We start our journey with Mr Gould, Housemaster of Hawke, Lover of CLA and self-proclaimed super intellect. While it was clear from the get-go that maths wasn’t his thing with his email to me ending with ‘I really cannot do any maths….’, the confidence was CLEARLY strong. And so it should be, as Mr Gould did better than many could have predicted. Being given a set of GCSE 1m questions his final result came to a staggering 2/8 marks ( 1 full mark and two 1/2 marks that I felt were necessary) below are pictures of my fave moments of Mr Gould’s exam.
On the other end of this head-to-head, we have the one and only, Mr Corbould, maths teacher extraordinaire, a proficient at scaring year 6s in their entrance interview, this man has it all. But can he answer Mr Gould’s questions? Yes he can. Mr Gould’s challenge was giving language techniques with the answer being descriptions of them. All in all he answered 3/9 of these questions accurately (with two half marks also being given, so I guess he answered 2 accurately). Here are some of his best answers:
Motif
Ans: a repeated pattern in language eg death, romance etc
Corbould: idk, something that is sort of uh individual or representative somebody.
Anagnorisis
Ans: point in a play where the main character realises another character’s true identity.
Corbould: no idea
Eponymous
Ans: the person, place, or thing that something else is named after. Eg Macbeth in the play Macbeth
Corbould: the same as something
congrats Mr Corbould on the narrow win there, both players did very well this round.
Hodson vs Clare
Next we have Mr Hodson, and I have learned that when he isn’t gazing at his one true love, the sanitiser, and sending mass bubble emails, he is actually quite the mathematic. His questions to Mr Clare involved a mix of foundation and higher questions and he had the option to take either one or both, and he chose both. This gave Mr Hodson more chance for marks, and embarrassment. Being given 10 questions, he correctly answered 3 fully with no half marks. Here are his answers:
Then Mr Clare had to answer Mr Hodson’s questions and… boy. Getting 1/9, Mr Clare tried his best and at least the answers are entertaining. Being given questions that ranged from adverb to transferred epithet, there was definitely some hard ones in there. Obviously Mr Hodson won this round but that doesn’t mean Maths doesn’t still stand a chance, remember, Mrs Botley has an English Lit A-Level. Anyway, Here are some of Mr Clare’s answers:
Adverb
Ans: a word that modifies a verb eg he sings loudly
Clare: describing word
Personification
Ans: giving an object humanlike qualities.
Clare: when you make it personal to a person themselves. So like talking about one person.
Blank verse
Ans: Verse without rhyme.
Clare: when there is no writing in the verse
Transferred epithet
Ans: an adjective or phrase that is used to describe the main quality of a person or thing.
Clare: Mr Hodson will win.
Stone vs Botley – Heads to Heads
I feel there is an unfair advantage here as Mrs Botley has an English Lit A-level but it doesnt involve language techniques so I’ll give a pass here. Anyway, Ms Stone’s questions were done differently with a matching game, she gave terms and examples and Mrs Botley had to match them. In the ned Mrs Botley recieved a 3.5/7 due to the fact that I believed one answer could be two but one was closer. She gave it a good go and even marked some of the English papers for me (a foundation 4 didn’t make this easy for me to mark). Here are her answers:
Ms Stone was next and as a two time published author, she is obviously smart, and turns out she can do maths to an extent as well, can’t she do it all. She too had the option of foundation or higher (sorry Mr Gould) taking the foundation option, and she did fairly well getting 2/5, 60%, 0.4? Tell me if that’s wrong. Here are her answers:
The mathematicians reading this might have been able to work out the winner by now. It took me 3 double checks and a lot of calculator work but I think I finally figured it out. The English department were given 22 questions collectively and managed to correctly answer 7. the maths department were given 25 questions and correctly answered 7.5… So congrats to the English department you are the smartest out of them all. I genuinely thought it would go the other way so I’m pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Also, it was way too much maths for me to handle.
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