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Quiz yourself on Fieldwork Presentation and Evaluation SkillsGet your flashcardsBuild my revision planTrack my progress✏️ Annotating Graphs, Maps, and Photographs Correctly
Annotations — explanatory notes added directly to a presentation — are where many students lose marks unnecessarily. They either forget annotations entirely, or add annotations that only describe what the graph already shows rather than adding geographical meaning.
What Every Graph Must Have
Adding Annotations to Graphs
A good graph annotation does one of three things: identifies a specific feature of interest (an anomaly, a peak, a change in trend), explains what caused that feature geographically, or links it to the broader enquiry hypothesis. Use an arrow from the annotation to the specific point or region being annotated.
Photo Annotations — The Three-Part Formula
Each annotation on a photograph should follow a three-part structure: (1) identify the feature, (2) explain the geographical process, (3) link to theory or hypothesis.
| Part | Weak Example | Strong Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Feature | "Pebbles" | "Well-rounded, disc-shaped pebbles approximately 5 cm diameter" |
| 2. Process | "Rounded by the sea" | "Rounded by attrition — repeated collision during transport has worn away angular edges" |
| 3. Theory link | — | "Consistent with Cailleux's roundness index — higher roundness values at this mid-beach location compared to cliff-base measurements supports the hypothesis of progressive attrition with transport distance" |
In practice, a photo annotation does not need all three parts in exhaustive detail — but it must go beyond identifying what is visible. The examiner is looking for geographical thinking, not description.
Quick Check: A student draws a bar chart showing EQS scores at four sites but forgets to label the y-axis. Why does this matter, and what should the label say?
Without a y-axis label and unit, the reader cannot know what the bar heights represent — are the scores out of 10, out of 50, or in some other unit? This reduces clarity (the reader has to guess or read the surrounding text) and loses technical marks. The label should state both the variable and the unit: for example, "Environmental Quality Score (out of 20)" or "EQS Total (/30)". If the scale is bi-polar (scores range from negative to positive), the axis should cross the x-axis at zero with positive scores above and negative below, making the direction of quality immediately visible.
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