Finding your way

Make sure to read questions and graphs carefully and pay attention to the marks assigned to each question as a guide to how long your answer should be when completing your Geography exam, writes Derek Deane of Yeats College

EXAM STRUCTURE

H igher and ordinary level papers have the same structure. The paper is divided into two parts. Section 1 contains short questions, while Section 2 is mostly longer questions. The paper is worth 150 marks and the exam lasts two hours.

Section 1- 60 marks, 40%.

There are 20 short questions in this section, with each question being worth 3 marks. You must answer all 20 questions. Within three of the questions there will be an either/or choice. On these either/or questions answer both parts of the question and your best answer will be used when the examiner tallies your total mark.

Make sure that you have a guess on the questions where you don’t know the answer. Many of the questions in this section require you to select the correct answer from a choice of two or three options. This means that any guess will have either a one in two or a one in three chance of being correct. A potentially very costly mistake here is turn over two pages in the exam and hence miss two whole pages of questions. This could result in you missing out on as many as five or six questions, or 15-18 marks. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, check the page number as you turn the pages, or check the question number to make sure you have not skipped two pages.

Some questions will be based on extracting the correct answer from a graph or a table of statistics. On these questions it is very important that you read the question carefully and be clear on what is being asked of you. When reading graphs make sure you read all the information that is on the graph, such as the title of the graph and how each axis is labelled. Make sure that you use the correct unit of measurement when giving your answer.

Section 2 - 90 marks, 60%.

There are five long questions here, each containing three parts (A,B, C). You must do three of the five questions. Typically question 5 will be based on ordnance survey maps and aerial photographs. Question 3 will be a ‘geographical mix’ question containing four parts (A,B, C, D), of which you need to do three parts. The general pattern here is that there will be one question on physical geography, one on social geography, one on economic geography, one on map skills and one containing a mixture of physical, economic and social geography.

When selecting which questions to do make sure you don’t select a question on the basis of knowing just one part of it very well, while knowing very little about the other two parts of the question. Pay attention to the marks assigned to the question as a guide to how long your answer should be. If the question is worth 2 marks you will not need to write more than a very brief statement. If the question is worth 10 marks about half of a page should be enough – so long as you have used the appropriate geographical terms accurately, shown that you understand these terms and kept your answer relevant to the question.

Ordinary and higher levels – what’s the difference?

Content-wise there is very little difference between the higher and ordinary levels. The higher level course has some extra case studies that are not required at ordinary level. The ordinary level exam requires less detailed answers. On the ordinary level exam two of the five long questions will be based on map and aerial photography skills. For those who are doing ordinary level it is strongly recommended that you make sure your map skills are good, as a quarter of the short questions are based on map skills and you could do two thirds of the long questions on maps and aerial photographs.

TIMING

It’s best to begin the exam by answering the short questions in Section 1. If you allow 2 minutes for each question you should be finished this section within 40 minutes. More than likely it will take you a good deal less than this. Once you’ve finished this section check the answer booklet to make sure that you have not missed any pages. Be aware that there are terms, statistics, diagrams etc within Section 1 that you may be able to use in your answers on Section 2. For Section 2 you should allow 10 minutes to read the five questions and to decide which three questions you are going to do. After this allow 20 minutes for each of your three answers.

It is important that you stick to this timeframe. If you have already spent 20 minutes writing on a particular question you have probably already picked up the bulk of the marks that you would have got on it if you continued to write for another 5/10 minutes. If you run out of time and don’t manage to answer all the questions this can drag your grade down significantly.

Some students will spend too much time drawing and colouring in diagrams. Typically a diagram, when asked for, will be worth just 2 marks. Any kind of very basic diagram will pick up these 2 marks so long as it is labelled. If you find that you have finished writing before the two hours are up, then go back over what you’ve written and check to see if you’ve read all the questions correctly and see if there is anything you can add to your answers. If you still have time answer some extra questions. If you answer four or five questions your best three answers will be used to calculate your grade.