Using a concept, and reaching Excellence
A geographic concept is required at every grade
- The concept requirement appears in all three grade rows, which is unusual, and it changes at each one:
- Achieved — a simple explanation of a geographic concept related to the pattern
- Merit — apply the concept
- Excellence — integrate the concept, showing insight
- This is not one requirement getting harder. It is three different jobs, and the wording tells you which one you are doing.
- You choose the concept, so choose the one your evidence best supports, not the one you find easiest to define.
- One concept used properly beats three named in passing. A paragraph containing five concept words and no evidence is a very common Achieved-level answer.
The concepts, and what each one asks about an urban pattern
- Patterns — is the arrangement describable in one sentence? Spatial, temporal, or both.
- Processes — what is the sequence of actions producing it? Suburbanisation, gentrification, decentralisation.
- Interaction — what affects what, and in which direction? Land use and transport interact both ways, and saying which way is the point.
- Change — what is different now, over what period, and how fast?
- Perspectives — what does each group believe that makes their view of the pattern reasonable to them?
- Sustainability — can this continue, and what would break first?
- Environments — what are the characteristics and features here, natural and cultural, and what produced them?
- Level 2 usually adds location — absolute (a grid reference, an address) or relative (nine minutes from the CBD by bus), and treated as an advantage or a constraint.
Simple explanation, apply, integrate — the three levels, side by side
- Simple explanation (Achieved). Say what the concept means and connect it to your pattern in general terms. Interaction means elements of an environment affecting each other. In Tawharau, the road network and the retail centres interact.
- Apply (Merit). Attach the concept to something specific, with evidence, and say which way it runs. Interaction runs from the road network to retail here: the junction of the ring road and the eastern arterial carries over 20,000 vehicles a day on each road, and 42,000 m2 of bulky-goods retail located on it between 2007 and 2011.
- Integrate (Excellence). Use the concept to do work the rest of the answer could not do without it. If you can delete the concept sentence and the argument still stands, it was decoration. Because interaction runs both ways, the strip's own success is now funding two new intersections that will raise the accessibility that put it there — which is why this pattern deepens rather than drifts.
- The deletion test is the fastest check you have. Cross out every sentence with the concept in it. If your explanation is unchanged, you have named a concept rather than integrated one.
- Integration means the concept appears throughout, not in a labelled paragraph. A section headed Geographic Concepts at the end is the clearest possible signal that nothing has been integrated.
The three levels of evidence, and how to tell them apart
- Supporting (Achieved) — a specific fact attached to a correct statement. Kowhai Mall holds about 31,000 m2 of floorspace.
- Detailed (Merit) — quantified, located and compared. Kowhai Mall's 31,000 m2 is half the CBD's 62,000 m2, and it sits 8 km east of it at the ring road junction.
- Integrated comprehensive (Excellence) — evidence that carries the argument rather than following it, and the same evidence used again to link a second part of the study. The figure sits inside the sentence that makes the point.
- Every piece of evidence needs a source and a date. Field data: what you counted, where, when, how many. Secondary data: who published it and when.
- Twenty solid facts are enough for this standard. Students who collect a hundred and use eight are collecting instead of thinking.
Structuring the submission
- Introduction — name the city, the pattern and the variable you measured, in three sentences. No history of the city.
- Description of the pattern and its variation — the four-part structure, with your map and graph placed where they are referred to.
- Explanation of the factors — one factor per section, each with a mechanism and a figure, tied to the part of the variation it accounts for.
- The concept, woven through, not bolted on at the end.
- A short conclusion that answers the question the study asked, states which findings are firm, and says what your data cannot settle.
- Refer to every figure in the text. A map nobody was asked to look at is not evidence.
Reaching each grade, plainly
- Achieved — describe the pattern, explain the factors, use case study evidence, explain a concept simply. Correct and specific is enough.
- Merit — convincingly, meaning reasoned and clear. Describe the variation in detail, explain the factors behind the variation, evidence quantified and located, concept applied to something specific.
- Excellence — perceptively, meaning insightful and/or original. Fully explain the variation and its causes, integrate evidence and terminology, integrate the concept.
- Where the insight usually is in this standard: a factor that explains one part of the variation and not another; two things that look like one process and turn out to be two; a number everyone quotes that means something different from what they think; a link that runs both ways.
- Insight is not a bigger vocabulary. It is a claim that your evidence supports and that a careful reader would not have reached without you.
Worked Example
Worked example
Here are three students' concept paragraphs. All three chose interaction and all three studied retail in the invented city of Tawharau. Place each at Achieved, Merit or Excellence, and say exactly what moves it up.
- Paragraph 1: Interaction means the elements of an environment affect each other. In Tawharau the transport network and the shops interact with each other, and this has affected the retail pattern.
- Paragraph 2: Interaction is shown between the road network and retail location. The junction of the ring road and the eastern arterial carries over 20,000 vehicles a day on each road, and 42,000 m2 of big-box retail was built there between 2007 and 2011. Because a bulky-goods store's catchment is measured in driving time, the traffic volume directly set the value of that site.
- Paragraph 3: The interaction between roads and retail in Tawharau runs both ways, and the second direction is the one that explains the pattern's persistence. The road junction located the retail in 2007. The retail is now relocating the road: the council's transport programme funds two new intersections and a bus route to serve the strip. The factor that selected the site is being strengthened by what it selected, which is why this pattern deepens over time instead of drifting — and it predicts that the gap between the strip and the vacant second rezoned block, which shares its zoning but not its junction, will widen rather than close.
Answer:
Step 1 — apply the deletion test to each.
Delete paragraph 1 and nothing is lost, because it contains no claim about Tawharau that survives its own removal. Delete paragraph 2 and a specific, evidenced link is lost. Delete paragraph 3 and the explanation of why the pattern persists disappears entirely, and so does a prediction.
Step 2 — place them.
Paragraph 1 is Achieved. The concept is correctly explained and connected to the pattern. Nothing is wrong with it; there is simply nothing specific in it.
Paragraph 2 is Merit. The concept is applied: it names which two things interact, which direction the effect runs, and it carries three pieces of quantified evidence and a mechanism.
Paragraph 3 is Excellence. The concept is integrated: it identifies a second direction of interaction, uses it to explain something the rest of the study could not explain (persistence), and generates a checkable prediction about a specific site.
Step 3 — name the single move between each level.
From 1 to 2: attach the concept to specific evidence and state the direction. The transport network and shops interact becomes this junction, this volume, this floorspace, this way round.
From 2 to 3: find the second direction, and make it explain something. Merit describes the interaction correctly. Excellence notices the loop and uses it, and a loop is the most reliable source of insight in an urban pattern because it turns a description into a prediction.
Achieved explains the concept, Merit applies it to specific evidence in a stated direction, Excellence uses it to explain something nothing else in the study could — and produces a prediction that could be checked.