A2 aqa geography june 2011 official thread

I swear, I think we should all boycott AQA.
Think about it, the exam grade boundaries are created on the basis of collective marks. So let's say that one of the modules was a piece of pie, whilst Weather and Climate for instance was not, anyone with the difficult module gets a much lower mark whilst others get higher, so basically, depending on how bad your module was (World Cities was horrid), could mean that you get the lovely Us, Es and Ds. Thanks a bunch AQA.

I swear, if the grade boundaries for this year's exam are not significantly lower than last year's lovely paper, I will go APE.

Reply 1561

lizolove

19

Original post by l0livia

I'm so annoyed, I just keep thinking about this exam and what stuff I should have written! :| Anyone else doing this?

Doing the exact same.
Tried to calculate my marks too, estimating my marks for individual questions and then adding them all up to try and work out my grade.
I know I'm being too generous with the marks I'm predicting I've gotten, but I know that if I face the harsh truth, I'll be so upset. I doubt I'll get into university now. If these exams were just down to effort, I'd have no issue! I revised for hundreds (literally) of hours for Geography especially.

I think they should have spread out the questions or given the more difficult paper in January. At least that way people have the chance to resit.
AQA shouldn't have based an entire exam on that, I mean, Plate tectonics for example, how are you meant to obtain 7 marks from describing the mid-Atlantic ridge? I felt like I'd written too little so went a bit mad and started talking about other stuff.

Reply 1562

jacky_12

Original post by SAMIR.NASRI

you believe the CMDC to be wrong?

Only because the CMDC is just one corporation, it isn't a partnership. I could be completely wrong though, best thing is to speak to teachers about it.

Reply 1563

GraviticWar

4

Original post by lizolove

Doing the exact same.
Tried to calculate my marks too, estimating my marks for individual questions and then adding them all up to try and work out my grade.
I know I'm being too generous with the marks I'm predicting I've gotten, but I know that if I face the harsh truth, I'll be so upset. I doubt I'll get into university now. If these exams were just down to effort, I'd have no issue! I revised for hundreds (literally) of hours for Geography especially.

I think they should have spread out the questions or given the more difficult paper in January. At least that way people have the chance to resit.
AQA shouldn't have based an entire exam on that, I mean, Plate tectonics for example, how are you meant to obtain 7 marks from describing the mid-Atlantic ridge? I felt like I'd written too little so went a bit mad and started talking about other stuff.

Agreed, you get literally tested on one page of the textbook in the S/Q's. Hordes of stuff that I learnt and revised was absolutely pointless in this exam that assesses such a narrow part of the specimen. Good luck to everyone, anyway!

- Curtis

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1564

lizolove

19

Original post by nbclough1

Do people think the grade boundaries will be low on this test?

Judging on how horrific everyone has said the test was, I presume the answer is yes. Unless for some weird reason the answers that we all thought were wrong are actually right... then they may just be higher than expected.

The marks are created by averages in the country, e.g. Only 10% can obtain an A, etc, so the top 10% of marks will be the boundary for an A, so presumably, if all do badly, which most have said they think they have, the boundaries will be low.
The boundaries in June were about 55/90 for an A, I estimate them to be about 40-something this time around, horrific exam. :frown:

Reply 1565

lizolove

19

Original post by GraviticWar

Agreed, you get literally tested on one page of the textbook in the S/Q's. Hordes of stuff that I learnt and revised was absolutely pointless in this exam that assess such a narrow part of the specimen. Good luck to everyone, anyway!

- Curtis

Know the feeling. I revised EVERYTHING. All of it in so much detail and spent so much time on bigger questions, only to find that the 10 markers were on aspects that were covered over 3 lines in the textbooks. How does they expect us to write a page of something when we are taught just 3 lines from a book?!

The syllabus needs to be a lot more specific, I just hope my essay was worth enough to bring up my marks.

Reply 1566

hownowbrownowl

My thoughts on the UDCs and Hulme conundrum on the last World Cities SQ:

Hulme City Challenge in the book is under the minitopic of Partnership Schemes. City Challenge in general is considered a Partnership Scheme.
UDCs such as London Docklands or Central Manchester or Merseyside, are under the minitopic of Property Led Regeneration/Schemes in the book.

They're both different types of regeneration, and as the question was specifically asking about Partnership Schemes, I think UDCs would be 99% wrong to talk about in that ten marker.

Reply 1567

Ark-Angel

The thing which is vastly annoying is the fact that AQA's supported book gives to partnership schemes a grand total of 10 lines with the worst example in history. Then in a box it says that park hill for example has partnership in it. In the AQA book the London Gateway (which I may have acedentally named the London Docklands, do you think ill be penalised lots for this????) is the main c/s for regen.

Therefore my teacher hypothesises that as the examples are linked (albeit tenuously) we may get away with it, for example the DP inwards investment is a partnership. I really hope I do cos I'm so predicted an A* and with this bloody exam I might miss the mark completely.

Eugh.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1568

GraviticWar

4

Original post by Ark-Angel

The thing which is vastly annoying is the fact that AQA's supported book gives to partnership schemes a grand total of 10 lines with the worst example in history.

All the textbooks bar the support material one from Collins(I can't thank this book enough), are just terrible for AQA A2 Geography. Nelson Thorne's textbook is one of the most abysmal textbooks I've ever had the displeasure of purchasing - for D & G especially. The TNC section is pathetically bad with approx. zero examples and it has a host of irrelevant facts on China. The only section which I liked was the part on the EU.

- Curtis

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1569

nosta

Is anyone doing GEOGA on Friday?

Reply 1570

fusion12345

2

dont u think 8 marks was too much for extrusive activity?

Reply 1571

GraviticWar

4

Original post by fusion12345

dont u think 8 marks was too much for extrusive activity?

Yes, I was thinking that.

- Curtis

Reply 1572

sfriday

Original post by nosta

Is anyone doing GEOGA on Friday?

is that the bangladesh thing? yeaaaahhhhss

Reply 1573

Natti

Please can someone tell me whether i have done the WC essay wrong?

the question asked about planning and management of urban areas, so i talked about city challenge, UDC's, site and service etc. But i have just looked on here and people are saying they wrote about transport and waste management. Im really panicking now thinking i've lost at least 40 marks ...

Reply 1574

Ark-Angel

Original post by Natti

Please can someone tell me whether i have done the WC essay wrong?

the question asked about planning and management of urban areas, so i talked about city challenge, UDC's, site and service etc. But i have just looked on here and people are saying they wrote about transport and waste management. Im really panicking now thinking i've lost at least 40 marks ...

Now I didn't do this question but one thing I do know about marking is if you went down the wrong route you wont loose 40 marks as you will still have said something of merit, I just wouldn't hope for a level 3 or 4

On the front of the partnership scheme thing it seems that the spec actually defines this as anything where the goverment works with someone else and therefore quangos are a valid partnership strangely - however I may have accedentally named the London Gateway London Docklands, do you think this will make that much difference ???

Reply 1575

hownowbrownowl

Original post by Ark-Angel

The thing which is vastly annoying is the fact that AQA's supported book gives to partnership schemes a grand total of 10 lines with the worst example in history. Then in a box it says that park hill for example has partnership in it. In the AQA book the London Gateway (which I may have acedentally named the London Docklands, do you think ill be penalised lots for this????) is the main c/s for regen.

Therefore my teacher hypothesises that as the examples are linked (albeit tenuously) we may get away with it, for example the DP inwards investment is a partnership. I really hope I do cos I'm so predicted an A* and with this bloody exam I might miss the mark completely.

Eugh.

Yeah I can see the problem. Although my textbook has about two pages each on partnership schemes and property led regeneration but we had never learnt it in lesson. I only realised it was in the textbook like three days ago and quickly revised it aha.

I don't think my teacher thought it would come up either so he didnt bother properly teaching those bits to us.

I've theorised that I might miss out on the A* by a few UMS marks which isn't cool at all, but A is good still and is my predicted grade. Would just have loved that little bit extra to get an extra grade though!

Reply 1576

Ark-Angel

Hownowbrownowl what example in it did you use for the question then ???

And unlike your book the Nelson Thorns one has as I said 10 lines on it

The other thing we could note is as GEOG3 is only 60% we could still pull it back with GEOG4 whatever. For example if you got full UMS on that(ie 80UMS) You would only need 100UMS for the fabled A* which last year was 62 marks, basically that is just achieving an A. Therefore don't loose all hope yet :smile:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1577

hownowbrownowl

I did Hulme City Challenge Partnership and focussed on that as an example, using details I learned about City Challenge to fit in with the case study of Hulme.
That one was easy for me because Hulme was also our case study of the inner city decline (along with Liverpool) so I just tied in bits and bobs of the two topics together.

My book was by Barker, Redfern and Skinner and was actually ok in some places..

Reply 1578

nosta

woops, ment to put GEOG4A.

I sat this in January and got a C. I'm hoping for a B or A this time around. I've been going through the JAN 2011 paper and the last question has stumped me on how to get 12 marks.

- "explain why it is important to use different graphical techniques to help geographical understanding."

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1579

Ark-Angel

Ah now you see you will be well on for full marks using that. As I said I used London Gateway (which I then incorrectly named the London Docklands cos I am a fool) and therefore may struggle a bit more.

A2 aqa geography june 2011 official thread

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