Parts (a) and (b): describing and explaining
Part (a): the description task
- Part (a) asks you to describe — the location and geographic environment of a named place, the geography of it (location, size and extent) with precision, or the spatial or temporal pattern shown in the resources.
- Describe means say what, where and how much. No causes, no evaluation.
- For a location question, give both kinds of location. Absolute (grid reference, coordinates, named administrative area) and relative (direction and distance from something else).
- For an extent question, quantify from the scale. Length, width, area, and what lies within the extent.
- For a pattern question, use the three moves from the graphing page: overall shape, two figures with units, and the exception named.
Precision is the Merit word here
- The standard's Merit criterion for skills is "with precision". In practice that means four things:
- units on every number — 6.2 km, 2.3 m, 66 mm a year
- places named, not described vaguely — the northern districts of Teluk, not one part of the city
- measurements taken from the scale, and said to have been
- appropriate rounding — no more precision than the resource supports
- Precision is not length. A short answer with four exact figures beats a page of approximate description.
- Say where each figure came from. From resource C… takes three words and demonstrates selection.
Part (b): the two-item explanation task
- Part (b) is always paired and counted, in every year checked. The two commonest forms:
- explain ONE natural and ONE cultural cause or challenge
- describe TWO different perspectives and explain why people hold them
- Read the categories as carefully as the number. Two natural causes when one of each was asked for is half an answer, however good both are.
- Explain means give the mechanism. A cause named without a mechanism is a label, exactly as in AS91426.
- Each explanation needs its own evidence from the resources, and the two should not lean on the same figure if you can avoid it.
- Keep them separate and label them. Natural cause: … Cultural cause: … Markers should not have to hunt.
Natural and cultural: getting the distinction right
- A natural cause happens without people: compaction under the delta's own weight, tidal range, river discharge, storm surge, sea-level change.
- A cultural cause is caused by people: groundwater extraction, pond construction, embankment building, urban growth, land clearance.
- Some causes look natural and are not. Subsidence sounds physical, but subsidence driven by extraction is cultural in origin and physical in mechanism. Say which part you mean.
- In the invented Sarupa delta the cleanest pair is: natural — the delta compacting under its own weight, recorded as about 0.6 m beneath the uninhabited ponds; cultural — groundwater extraction beneath the city, which takes the same figure to 2.3 m.
- That pair is strong because the same measurement separates them. Whenever the resources let you isolate the two causes with one figure, use it.
Perspectives in part (b)
- When the booklet supplies quotations, perspectives are almost certainly being examined.
- Give each perspective a group, a value and a reading of the evidence. Who holds it, what they think matters, and what they therefore make of the same facts.
- Explain why they hold it, which is the part the question names and candidates skip. A perspective comes from a position: what the person depends on, what they stand to lose, what their community has experienced.
- Two perspectives that read the evidence the same way are one perspective. Check they actually differ.
- Do not judge between them here. Part (c) is where evaluation is invited.
Worked Example
Worked example
Part (b): Explain ONE natural and ONE cultural cause of the subsidence affecting the given environment. Use evidence from the resources.
Answer:
Step 1 — separate the two before writing, and check they are genuinely different in kind.
Natural: compaction of the delta sediments under their own weight. Cultural: groundwater extraction to supply the city. One happens with nobody present; the other is a human decision. Good pair.
Step 2 — the natural cause, with its mechanism.
A delta is built of recently deposited sand, silt and clay with a high water content and a loose grain packing. Under the weight of each new layer, the grains below rearrange into a tighter packing and water is squeezed out, so the surface falls. This happens to every delta on Earth and requires no people at all.
Evidence from the resources. The subsidence map records about 0.6 m beneath the aquaculture ponds, where there is no city, no high-rise loading and no significant extraction. That figure is the natural rate, isolated.
Step 3 — the cultural cause, with its mechanism.
Water is pumped from the sands beneath the delta to supply a population that has grown from 0.5 to 1.9 million since 1990. Removing water lowers the pore pressure that helps hold the grains apart, so the sediment compacts far faster than its own weight alone would cause, and the surface falls with it.
Evidence from the resources. In the northern districts of Teluk, where extraction is heaviest, the same map records 2.3 m — nearly four times the rate under the ponds, on the same delta, in the same sediments, over the same period.
Step 4 — use the pair to strengthen both, which is the move worth making.
Because both figures come from one map covering one delta, the difference between them isolates the cultural contribution: roughly 0.6 m of the total is natural and roughly 1.7 m is attributable to extraction. Neither cause could be quantified without the other.