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OCR geography A level exam 14/17th June

I'm very confused about the set up for the a level.
im doing it at home so havent had any help with this! for the AS (which i did a week ago as im doing it all in a year) i skipped revising 1 topic for each unit, which went fine as expected, so i want to do it again for the a level paper as i dont really have much time.

so im mainly talking about unit 3 as unit 4 is just skills which you have to do.

so unit three you have:

Environmental issues
Earth Hazards
Ecosystems and environments under threat
Climatic Hazards

Economic issues
Population and resources
Globalisation
Development and inequalities

i looked through an A2 paper to see which ones i could skip, and its all very confusing.
so you answer three questions for part 1, with at least one from environmental and one from economic
but then in part 2 you answer two questions, one from each.

so i guess what im asking is:

a) can i do the question from the same topic (say globalisation) in part 1 and part 2?
b) what ones would you recommend skipping (the hardest)/how many should i skip?


thanks, so baffed.

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Reply 1
Yes you can do a question from the same topic in part 1 and 2, just as you have said above you answer three questions for part 1, with at least one from environmental and one from economic and in part 2 you answer two questions, one from environmental and one from economic.

Personally I would skip the ecosystems one and the population and resources if you were wanting to skip one from each topic.
Development and globalisation topics are very similar therefore they are easy to learn together and are very interlinked. In terms of environmental issues the earth hazards and climatic hazards just require you to learn one or two of the case studies of each hazard involved and are a lot more interesting than the ecosystems topic.

Personally I am only learning Earth Hazards, Climatic Hazards, Globalisation and Development and inequalities

Hope this helps :smile:
Reply 2
Original post by Emma292929
Yes you can do a question from the same topic in part 1 and 2, just as you have said above you answer three questions for part 1, with at least one from environmental and one from economic and in part 2 you answer two questions, one from environmental and one from economic.

Personally I would skip the ecosystems one and the population and resources if you were wanting to skip one from each topic.
Development and globalisation topics are very similar therefore they are easy to learn together and are very interlinked. In terms of environmental issues the earth hazards and climatic hazards just require you to learn one or two of the case studies of each hazard involved and are a lot more interesting than the ecosystems topic.

Personally I am only learning Earth Hazards, Climatic Hazards, Globalisation and Development and inequalities

Hope this helps :smile:


Haha yes it was :smile: Thank you!
Just getting the hang of this whole geography thing, and havent even started thinking what field study im going to write about for geographical skills (seeing as i didnt go on a field trip), quite worried about that one actually :s-smilie: lol x
Reply 3
Original post by Charlieeeeee
Haha yes it was :smile: Thank you!
Just getting the hang of this whole geography thing, and havent even started thinking what field study im going to write about for geographical skills (seeing as i didnt go on a field trip), quite worried about that one actually :s-smilie: lol x


I sat the geographical skills paper in January and I also found it highly difficult to prepare for - I did mainly focus on the two field trips we had carried out. I can understand that you would be worried about not having done them - but the field trips we used we had carried out two years earlier during GCSE field trips, so they were not very relevant at all especially as we had not used any of the advanced statistical methods in our field work which limited our understanding of the methods themselves.
All I would say is that for the skills paper make sure you directly answer the question and always link your points to the question, which I know sounds obvious, but a lot of people are having to retake the paper this June because they were not going along the right line.
I hope that also helps xx
We only do three one from earth hazards and two from the global issues bit so im doing globalisation population and resources then hazards :smile:
Original post by Emma292929

Original post by Emma292929
I sat the geographical skills paper in January and I also found it highly difficult to prepare for - I did mainly focus on the two field trips we had carried out. I can understand that you would be worried about not having done them - but the field trips we used we had carried out two years earlier during GCSE field trips, so they were not very relevant at all especially as we had not used any of the advanced statistical methods in our field work which limited our understanding of the methods themselves.
All I would say is that for the skills paper make sure you directly answer the question and always link your points to the question, which I know sounds obvious, but a lot of people are having to retake the paper this June because they were not going along the right line.
I hope that also helps xx


How did you do in january and did you find the paper hard?
Reply 6
yeah i sorta mucked up skills in jan by not reading the question properly. remember to answer everything that they ask. eg if they ask you to describe and justify, do both not just one :biggrin:
Reply 7
Original post by Charlieeeeee
I'm very confused about the set up for the a level.
im doing it at home so havent had any help with this! for the AS (which i did a week ago as im doing it all in a year) i skipped revising 1 topic for each unit, which went fine as expected, so i want to do it again for the a level paper as i dont really have much time.

so im mainly talking about unit 3 as unit 4 is just skills which you have to do.

so unit three you have:

Environmental issues
Earth Hazards
Ecosystems and environments under threat
Climatic Hazards

Economic issues
Population and resources
Globalisation
Development and inequalities

i looked through an A2 paper to see which ones i could skip, and its all very confusing.
so you answer three questions for part 1, with at least one from environmental and one from economic
but then in part 2 you answer two questions, one from each.

so i guess what im asking is:

a) can i do the question from the same topic (say globalisation) in part 1 and part 2?
b) what ones would you recommend skipping (the hardest)/how many should i skip?


thanks, so baffed.


You have it all right, 3 questions for section A (at least one from each economic and environmental), and 2 questions for section B (one from each).

Timings that might help you tomorrow:
15 minutes - question choosing, essay planning and checking at the end.
45 minutes - section A, 15 minutes on each question.
45 minutes - 1st long essay.
45 minutes - last long essay.

These timings reflect the marks - I'm going to try my best to stick to this plan tomorrow, I really am! :smile:

Is anyone else finding this exam pretty much impossible? It's really, really interesting - especially the modules on development, inequalities, globalisation, population etc, I love it as it's relevant for the world, but it's so hard, and in the mark scheme/examiners report they mention issues not touched on in the book! ahhh!

Good luck everyone :smile:
Point evaluate explain Link and case studies for me :biggrin:
good luck everyone! hope they give us some nice questions.
Reply 10
Original post by im1190
You have it all right, 3 questions for section A (at least one from each economic and environmental), and 2 questions for section B (one from each).

Timings that might help you tomorrow:
15 minutes - question choosing, essay planning and checking at the end.
45 minutes - section A, 15 minutes on each question.
45 minutes - 1st long essay.
45 minutes - last long essay.

These timings reflect the marks - I'm going to try my best to stick to this plan tomorrow, I really am! :smile:

Is anyone else finding this exam pretty much impossible? It's really, really interesting - especially the modules on development, inequalities, globalisation, population etc, I love it as it's relevant for the world, but it's so hard, and in the mark scheme/examiners report they mention issues not touched on in the book! ahhh!

Good luck everyone :smile:


thanks, that is helpful!!
i dont think its impossible, persay, (especially next to chem and bio which i also took lol) i think its a huge bonus that you get options as to what question to choose. fingers crossed you should find yourself able to answer every question!

yeah my textbook is terrible, it has hardly anything lol, the basic minimum! if it makes you feel better i found a guide which has essays of different gradings (A* to D grade) and the D grade one was TERRIBLE. literally, you would find it hard to do worse, and this guy managed to get a D. (they wrote the 'three gorges dam' in china as '3 gorges dam' LOL)

ill be back after the required waiting period by the student room to discuss how you thought it went! good luck again!
how did everyone find it and what questions did you all do?
I found it so hard for timing- did essays first:
Impacts of flooding are the same everywhere- Discuss
To what extent can resuorces be managed and planned sustainably?

I struggled hugely with the volcano 10 marker
The calorie intake for resources and the extract were okay - in general I panicked!

How about u?
did anyone else find the section B questions really...weird? i've never seen ones like that before really.
i did the one about globalisation having only advantages and the difference between time span of depressions/anticyclones
I did population and earth hazards so found section B questions actually fine. just 10 mark qs that i struggled immensely with mainly
Original post by ellen-marie1992

I did the 10 markers but i found the calorie on hard so i left it till last :/ in the end i said like unsustainable consumption :/

what was your argument for the flloding i did bangladesh vs severn uk :/ and the resource i did fishing and forestry !!
i found the volcano one alright i thought i was just pop exposed to the hazard?

what do u mean the questions were strange?
Reply 16
What did people write for "There is a range of human responses to earth hazards"?
management short term / long term so monitoring/
Reply 18
So did you effectively just slap down like monitoring stations, early warning, replanting trees aid etc, studies on where it's happened and the pros and cons of each? My teacher said I should have written the severity of each hazard but I forgot that :s
what for the 10 marker? i only wrote a page and a half!!
i didnt write down places or anything just said like monitoring and education for managment yeh and the effectivness of it ::smile:

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