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Edexcel Geography A2 Unit 4: Life on the Margins- 16th June 2016

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what is a good way of defining supply for this exam? for the intro
Original post by w4keup_
My teacher thinks it'll be 'socio-economic factors are the most influential factors in food production' discuss (socio-economic being interchangeable for political or environmental) or something to do with surpluses given that the term surplus apparently hasn't been mentioned in a pre-release since 2011 up until this year.


My teacher has also predicted this, how would you structure your report?

Intro

Methodology

Analysis:

Socio-economic factor

Socio-economic factor

Environemntal factor

Polticial factor

Conclusion

Like this?
Also, how is everyone studying for this exam? Are you guys going to be making a model report and learning it by heart?
Reply 23
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
Also, how is everyone studying for this exam? Are you guys going to be making a model report and learning it by heart?


Hi, personally I am going to write a model report but I am not going to be learning it off by heart. Writing a model essay will help you with your timings but i have read in previous examiners reports that it is obvious when people just write a pre-written model instead of actually answering the question asked.
Hope this helps :smile:
Reply 24
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
My teacher has also predicted this, how would you structure your report?

Intro

Methodology

Analysis:

Socio-economic factor

Socio-economic factor

Environemntal factor

Polticial factor

Conclusion

Like this?


Yeah I think that's quite a nice structure although my teacher has said that for the analysis, we should lead by scale so it would be something like...

1 - Regional Scale

1.1 - Socio-economic causes - Famine
1.2 - Political / Environmental causes - Famine
1.3 - Socio-economic causes - Surplus
1.4 - Political and environmental causes - Surplus

and then repeat for National and Local / Small scales

I'm not sure if this approach is too long-winded as it breaks the report up quite a lot but I suppose there are still 3 strong sub headings through using scales.

Any advice / ideas would be really helpful :smile:
Original post by LWL
Yeah I think that's quite a nice structure although my teacher has said that for the analysis, we should lead by scale so it would be something like...

1 - Regional Scale

1.1 - Socio-economic causes - Famine
1.2 - Political / Environmental causes - Famine
1.3 - Socio-economic causes - Surplus
1.4 - Political and environmental causes - Surplus

and then repeat for National and Local / Small scales

I'm not sure if this approach is too long-winded as it breaks the report up quite a lot but I suppose there are still 3 strong sub headings through using scales.

Any advice / ideas would be really helpful :smile:


Thats a nice structure! Although I'm not sure how you would manage to do 4 case studies for each concept, that seems a bit too lengthy.
Reply 26
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
Thats a nice structure! Although I'm not sure how you would manage to do 4 case studies for each concept, that seems a bit too lengthy.


I think our way around that was to find multi-purpose case studies, I believe it's also advised by examiners to do so.
For instance, The Sahel is one of our regional case studies and factors within it include climate (env) population / migration (socio-econ) and political instability / terrorism (pol) and then we have less detailed case studies that may be used to further back up a point
Original post by LWL
I think our way around that was to find multi-purpose case studies, I believe it's also advised by examiners to do so.
For instance, The Sahel is one of our regional case studies and factors within it include climate (env) population / migration (socio-econ) and political instability / terrorism (pol) and then we have less detailed case studies that may be used to further back up a point


So are you going to be structuring it like:

Socio-economic factor with political + environmental etc
Political factor with socio-economic + environmental etc

and then assessing whether socio-economic is the greatest cause i nthe sub conclusion?
Reply 28
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
So are you going to be structuring it like:

Socio-economic factor with political + environmental etc
Political factor with socio-economic + environmental etc

and then assessing whether socio-economic is the greatest cause i nthe sub conclusion?


Not quite, I will still split the factors up but just reapply the case studies when necessary. For instance with the sahel, I will use it to strongly back up environmental factors causing famine (deficit) and to a lesser extent for say political.

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily follow the structure I've said because its almost formed as a result of the case studies i've decided to use. Using the factors as headings probably makes more sense as it directly links to the pre release info
Original post by LWL
Not quite, I will still split the factors up but just reapply the case studies when necessary. For instance with the sahel, I will use it to strongly back up environmental factors causing famine (deficit) and to a lesser extent for say political.

That being said, I wouldn't necessarily follow the structure I've said because its almost formed as a result of the case studies i've decided to use. Using the factors as headings probably makes more sense as it directly links to the pre release info


Oh okay, but wouldnt it be better to use concepts as a sub-heading related to the factors?
Reply 30
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
Oh okay, but wouldnt it be better to use concepts as a sub-heading related to the factors?


What do you mean by concepts?
Original post by LWL
What do you mean by concepts?


Like War is a concept of political factors
Desertification of environmental
Reply 32
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
Like War is a concept of political factors
Desertification of environmental


Oh right, then yeah that makes sense :smile:
Original post by LWL
Oh right, then yeah that makes sense :smile:


Ok, nice will you be doing a model report and learning it? What are all the case studies that you will be using?
Reply 34
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
Ok, nice will you be doing a model report and learning it? What are all the case studies that you will be using?


I'll write a model but won't learn it word for word. I think it's more important just to remember case studies, specific data / facts and references.

The main case studies i'm using are the Sahel, the EU, USA, North Korea, Papua New Guinea
Original post by LWL
I'll write a model but won't learn it word for word. I think it's more important just to remember case studies, specific data / facts and references.

The main case studies i'm using are the Sahel, the EU, USA, North Korea, Papua New Guinea


If you dont mind sharing, what are you using EU and USA for? Surplus' im guessing? North Korea for Political famine? Sahel for desertification? and Papua New Guinea for ?
Reply 36
Original post by OrdinaryStudent
If you dont mind sharing, what are you using EU and USA for? Surplus' im guessing? North Korea for Political famine? Sahel for desertification? and Papua New Guinea for ?


all correct, EU and USA both subsidies / democracy, Papua New Guinea is Climate / El Nino / Topography
Original post by LWL
all correct, EU and USA both subsidies / democracy, Papua New Guinea is Climate / El Nino / Topography


Okay thats nice, when you do write your report could you send me your structure and what you wrote in the section. Im not asking for the whole report but just as a model to follow :smile: e.g. for intro define inequalities etc
Reply 38
I'm an external student sitting this exam and I'm totally confused as to how to structure this. I was initially gonna do socio-economic, political and environmental but I've read examiner reports where they don't recommend the "one factor-one case study" approach as it oversimplifies it. If so, would it be better to structure it in terms of scale and then use multi-purpose case studies?

Where is everyone getting their case studies from btw? I have no resources, only the A Level textbooks and I'm honestly shitting myself about this exam 😩 Would appreciate any help/links/structures and example essays because I feel like I repeat myself with sub-conclusions and lose marks on conclusion in general!
Reply 39
Also, this might sound a bit stupid but if food supply refers to production and distribution, how would you use the fat China case study? Surely, this is about consumption?

Like I said, I'm really clueless here and finding this exam a lot harder than I thought it would be

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