A2 AQA Geography 4B Advanced Info Booklet

That last question! Glad other people found it difficult too.

First & last questions were not so brilliant...

For the last question I basically copied the page out of the pre-release about how the area has complex feeding patterns and how there is over 15 special species etc.

The rest was brilliant though! Did everyone do Choropleth maps for the mapping technique? I'm not sure if it wanted 1 or 2 mapping techniques but I just put 1 down.

Traffic survey question was a breeze too, though I would have liked more marks for something I put most revision into.. 5 marks.. really?

Reply 222

d_aan

1

Original post by ThatsJustTooBad

The first one totally threw me :frown:

Snap, was so confused.

Original post by lukas1051

Wow that was not good... hated the last question :s-smilie:

Original post by elsiewho

That last question! Glad other people found it difficult too.

I'm glad everybody was unsure on that question as well. Really confused on the word "justify" as I wasn't sure whether to talk about why it needed to protect but also to argue against.. As I didn't really put ant reasons against the needs for the action plan, only evidence for :frown:

Reply 223

nicole_hod

Original post by 0zzy94

First & last questions were not so brilliant...

For the last question I basically copied the page out of the pre-release about how the area has complex feeding patterns and how there is over 15 special species etc.

The rest was brilliant though! Did everyone do Choropleth maps for the mapping technique? I'm not sure if it wanted 1 or 2 mapping techniques but I just put 1 down.

Traffic survey question was a breeze too, though I would have liked more marks for something I put most revision into.. 5 marks.. really?

Totally agree...they were a bit of a bugger :/ Also wasn't keen on that socio-economic question...Yeah, I did chloropleths for both of them, I was confused as well, but I just wrote about chloropleths for both of them...

Reply 224

gm1994

Original post by 0zzy94

First & last questions were not so brilliant...

For the last question I basically copied the page out of the pre-release about how the area has complex feeding patterns and how there is over 15 special species etc.

The rest was brilliant though! Did everyone do Choropleth maps for the mapping technique? I'm not sure if it wanted 1 or 2 mapping techniques but I just put 1 down.

Traffic survey question was a breeze too, though I would have liked more marks for something I put most revision into.. 5 marks.. really?

I used choropleth maps as an example for the first point (column B i think?) and for the second point (columns c,d+e) i used proportional pie charts because i found a sheet on it in my folder, thank god for last minute cramming!

Reply 225

TheQuietOne

11

Original post by 0zzy94

The rest was brilliant though! Did everyone do Choropleth maps for the mapping technique?

I said a choropleth map for column B and located stacked bars OR located pie charts for C, D and E as the data is conveniently presented in percentages already so they would be easy to compare and no calculations would need to be done, lessening the risk of human error. As they would be located they would show spatial patterns/geographical trends in a similar but more complicated way than a choropleth map would. I also mentioned that of these two, stacked bars was the best choice to avoid the problem presented by pie charts of having segments too small to see and compare easily. (They would need to be quite small unless they were put onto a massive map.)

I hated the socio-economic question, I had no idea what to say. I mentioned a few areas that stood out with higher or lower statistics than the others, but ended up pointing out that as all of Poole had a high percentage of owner occupied homes and people in lower managerial positions, there weren't really any distinct groups shown that differed from the rest. Also, as it was mostly raw data and each SOA had a different population, it was difficult to compare them. :s-smilie:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 226

bonkersCFC

Anyone up for a Black-tailed Godwit/Shelduck shooting session in Holes Bay at the weekend? We'll show them what a Ramsar site is.

Reply 227

TheQuietOne

11

Original post by bonkersCFC

Anyone up for a Black-tailed Godwit/Shelduck shooting session in Holes Bay at the weekend? We'll show them what a Ramsar site is.

Noooooooo! :frown:

the poor birds are innocent!

I'd be happy to go along to Poole and drive the wrong way around the damned one way system though -.- spent ages memorising where it was and the road names and then I didn't even really need to mention it. :mad:

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 228

Sophie1805

14

Didn't think it was too bad! I thought they could have given us a better question to 'show off' for 15 marks.

Reply 229

harrymaxwell

Was interesting...

Didn't like the First Q at start so did Q2 on traffic survey that i'd learnt and went back

Then it came quite clear...
On human side i talked about congestion meaning people may not get to work on time, going onto talk about potential stress lowering quality of life and another point i forgot

Then on physical I talked about pollution and how it could link ecosystems (thank God we're doing ecology this term)

For the mapping techniques I did Choropleth for the first and then bar charts stuck onto a map for the second. Gave full justification for both - i also described how to do it but wasn't sure if I needed too as question simply said "identify a technique and justify"

Loved the socioeconomic question. I split up social and economic then went through the data showing a clear division in managerial jobs, how they are skilled so more income and those with less managerial have more lower paid routine jobs so not co-incidental or diverse and indeed a grouping. I said we may interpret that this would lead to rich/ poor social grouping but then went onto say I don't think that's accurate as we don't have further ethnic data and there may be community projects not included in the data. So overall economic to a large extent and social to some extent

Wasn't too sure about the one on how redevelopment would benefit other areas but got into the swing of it. Said how it may stimulate surrounding areas particularly the regeneration zone referencing Stratford and Thatcher's enterprise zones as a a case study. Then talked about reducing population densities despite a lack of affordable housing in current climate and how jobs may spread. A potential influx of tourists from more managed green spaces and ended on spread likely in close wards but not those far away. Could even be a shift in economic activity but tourism revenue should counteract that.

HATED the last question. Basically I made my points on how its key for the economy, internationally important species numbers could have medical importance in the future linking food chain disruption etc and then went through each point pretty much repeating myself and how they would counteract it. So annoying it had to be a 15 marker!!

Reply 230

rlgreen2

I didnt mind the last question, but thats probably because we spent 2 lessons going over the birds and that kinds of thing.. didnt like the first question though.. human and physical?

I basically just said why the bridge was needed, and put them as human geog. Then for the physical geog i said that was largely about where the bridge was located.. and why alternatives werent used..

Reply 231

DavidCrow

9

Could anyone post the questions up please? Thanks :smile:

Reply 232

alittlehelp

just me who was thrown off by the lines, I felt like every question I needed to write more than the given lines and it was impossible to do a question without reaching the extra space part? Might have written too much

Reply 233

~S94

A decent exam I thought. If you can get round the wording there was few problems. Last question was a bit much for 15 marks I suppose but bad. I often needed more than the Extra space though! The normal space is no where near enough imo!

Reply 234

deadwr0ng

Original post by alittlehelp

just me who was thrown off by the lines, I felt like every question I needed to write more than the given lines and it was impossible to do a question without reaching the extra space part? Might have written too much

yeah totally feel this!! i was like doing asterisks every where and writing in tiny letters!!

Reply 235

0zzy94

16

For the first one I probably did a page just on human, with a para on physical.

Human needs for new bridge:
-Congestion -Talked about how the old bridge has 20k car flow and the congestion at rush hours was abysmal etc
-Bridge gave critical infrastructure to Hamworthy - a quote from the website
-Linking the 2 communities of Hamworthy and Town Center together
-Something else which I've forgot.

I think the first question's answer basically came from the website, so it was testing you on how much you read up on the internet.

For physical needs that require a new bridge I struggled; basically taking points from the booklet on how Ramsar, SSSI's, Heathland, Sea etc prevent expansion, which is why it is so critical for Poole to exploit the under-utilised Hamworthy, and to do this, a new bridge is required.

Thoughts? Were you meant to write something like that?

Reply 236

dannyk

2

Original post by Sophie1805

Didn't think it was too bad! I thought they could have given us a better question to 'show off' for 15 marks.

My thoughts exactly, it was alright though a lot came straight from the booklet and it didn't give us much chance to use our own knowledge (though I did make up some statistics about birds haha). Shame the question that we worked on last about why people may not be happy about the development didn't come up!

Reply 237

lukas1051

18

Right, now I've got a chance to sit down I'll say what I thought about the exam.

Personally, I thought it went badly. Not necessarily because the questions were bad (there were some stinkers, but some nice ones too), I just couldn't focus, I feel that my writing lacked flair and focus, definitely didn't feel Level 3. I did a lot of research beforehand, but there were no opportunities to insert any of the extra stuff I found out, and I kept writing a lot about one point and then realising I was running out of space and time so rushing the rest. Bleeeeh :frown:

The first question seemed OK. For the human side I spoke about the congestion affecting peoples lives eg. making them late to work, and the fact that the state of the current bridge means people don't want to cross it, so Hamworthy becomes isolated from Poole, the local economies suffer etc. the physical side was more difficult in my opinion, I mentioned that congestion causes pollution which could have a knock on effect on people's health and noise from congestion could affect the birds... apart from that not much else. I hope they weren't expecting equal amounts of each.

The fieldwork question was good I guess, I was expecting it, however I wish it would have been worth more marks as I had a lot I wanted to write but couldn't.

For the data presentation question, I said choropleth for pop density, and stacked bar chart for the housing tenure, and expanded on these points, not much else to say really. The next question I spoke about how you can make assumptions about some factors eg. areas with higher pop density may be terraced inner city housing which is cheaper and poor quality, so maybe the people are poorer... for the housing tenure and employment I kind of said the same about how you can make assumptions from the proportions of people in each category, seemed pretty obvious though.

The 12 marker should have been a good question, but I'd lost focus by that point and it was all over the place... I really should have done better. I can't really remember what I put, it was just really obvious stuff like how the redevelopment will provide lots of jobs in the short term and long term, it will attract investors and have a ripple effect, it will give children motivation to do well (wtf was I going on about here?)... but it all felt a bit general like you could relate it to anywhere and it just didn't feel like a high level answer.

The last question was pretty painful too... I spent the whole first page rehashing what was written in the AIB basically, prattling on about how the birds are so important and rare despite the fact that I kind of agreed with the engineer, but I couldn't think of any major problems that would occur if they were gone... I mean it's a shame for any animal to go extinct, but the effect on people would probably be minimal, no? Then I wrote some bull**** about how if the birds are gone it could affect tourism (birdwatchers) and damage the heritage of the area... idk. I did mention that some of the constraints would prevent effects stretching beyond the birds ie. contamination could be dangerous to people as well, but I don't know if that will score me marks.

So overall I'm feeling pretty bad about it, but I guess if everyone found it hard maybe the grade boundaries will be low? What are they normally like for these papers anyway?

Reply 238

howourth

Felt the exam went ok. worried that i didn't quote from the booklet as much as i should of but there wont loadds of questions where you could, e.g - fieldwork question, question on 'outline a technique'. then there were 2 questions on the census data so i used some of that. the last question i thought was really easy cuz ecology you can just make up and say how important it is for tourism, ecology, environmentally, healthy minds, economically important, flood defence etc though i wish i quoted more from the appropriate assessment