Geographic concepts and skills — practice questions

Describe the structure of the AS91243 examination and list the geographic conventions a map drawn in it must carry.

Explain in detail why the grade ladder for AS91243 means that time spent perfecting the short skills tasks can lower your grade.

The resource booklet supplies both the environment and the definitions of the geographic concepts. Explain, showing insight, what this tells you about what AS91243 is really testing.

Using an environment you have been given, show your understanding of the concepts of pattern, process and interaction.

For a settlement whose population fell by a third after its main employer closed, and which has since seen visitor numbers rise sharply, explain in detail how the concept of change applies.

Explain, showing insight, how the interaction between people and a given environment has affected people's perspectives of it.

Describe how you would draw a précis map of a given environment showing settlement, transport routes and vegetation, and list the conventions it must carry.

Explain in detail why simplification on a précis map is a skill being assessed rather than a shortcut, and how you decide what to leave out.

A précis map and a photograph of the same place both show the environment, yet they support different kinds of geographic claim. Explain, showing insight, what each can prove that the other cannot.

Explain how to give a six-figure grid reference and how to convert a map distance into a ground distance.

A student gives grid references that are consistently one square too far north and east, and reports distances without units. Explain in detail what has gone wrong and how each error affects their grade.

Explain, showing insight, what the concept of location adds to a given environment that a grid reference alone does not capture.

Describe how to construct a cross-section between two points on a contour map, and what it shows.

A photograph in the resource booklet shows a road in the foreground, a lake in the middle ground and a range of hills in the background. On the map the road is in the south, the lake in the centre and the range in the north. Explain in detail how you would establish the direction the camera was facing, and how confident you can be.

Explain, showing insight, what a cross-section reveals about the interaction of processes in an environment that a contour map alone does not.

Describe the pattern shown by a climate graph for a station where rainfall runs from about 112 mm in February to about 196 mm in June, and mean temperature from about 17.8 degrees in January to about 8.4 degrees in July.

A choropleth map shows unemployment by district and a scatter graph shows income against life expectancy for twelve countries. Explain in detail what each graph can show about a pattern, and what each conceals.

Explain, showing insight, why an anomaly in a data set is often more geographically useful than the pattern it departs from.

For the data set 12, 15, 15, 18, 22, 24, 27, 31, 96 vehicles, calculate the mean, median, mode and range, and explain what each one tells you.

Explain in detail why a mean can be an accurate calculation and a misleading statistic, using a data set containing one event-day outlier.

Explain, showing insight, what statistics can and cannot contribute to a geographic explanation of a given environment.

Explain what valuing skills are, and describe how you would plan and structure the extended concept answer at the end of the paper.

Two groups in a given environment disagree about a proposed development while quoting the same resources. Explain in detail how you would use valuing skills to account for the disagreement.

Explain, showing insight, how the interaction between people and a given environment has affected the sustainability of that environment.