making up case studies

I'm not sure, but I've thought of this before.

You can literally do anything that refers to the question in hand, whether that be a town/river/etc in Australia, Italy or the UK. I imagine they'll Google the name and check it out if they don't know what you're referring to.

Interesting though.

But why would they bother ??

I imagine its stated somewhere that they have too.

...

Obviously there are common case studies mentioned in lots of textbooks that lots of students use in their exams. The examiners know these inside and out. But what happens if you either use an obscure case study they don't know about or even make up a case study?

I'm just curious because on an essay question last year I used a local example, that we hadn't been taught as a case study at all. But because I knew the area so well, I could give more detail than if I had chosen a standard case study from the textbook !

But do they just believe what you're saying as long as it sounds reasonable ?

For example in my exam last year, the question was about issues in tourist areas. I wrote about a place in England, near where I live. If I had said about the competition for space between humans and lions or humans and polar bears I probably wouldn't have got the marks. But I mentioned about sensible things that do happen.

But surely the examiner doesn't have time to check what you're saying. But for all they know I made up the name of the river. Or even if it does exist, some of the issues i mentioned may be made up!

Someone this year re-doing an AS exam said they could remember what happened in the case study and the date. But couldn't think of the location for the life of them. Because we have to use located case studies, they just put the name of the first town they could think of thats got a river running through it.