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Quiz yourself on Physical Geography FieldworkGet your flashcardsBuild my revision planTrack my progress💡 Exam Tips for Physical Geography Fieldwork
🎯 Common Question Types and Mark Allocations:
- "Describe how you collected data" — 4–6 marks — describe method + justify choice + mention repeats + sample size
- "Evaluate your investigation" — 6 marks — identify weakness + explain why it is a problem + suggest specific improvement
- "Describe what your results showed" — 4 marks — use TACT: trend, anomaly, comparison, terminology with figures
- "Explain why one site did not match the expected pattern" — 4 marks — name a geographical cause + explain the mechanism
- "Assess the extent to which your results supported your hypothesis" — 9 marks — describe evidence that supports + describe evidence that does not + overall judgement with reasons
📝 Key Command Words and What They Require:
- Describe: state what happened; use specific data values; do not explain unless asked
- Explain: give the geographical reason why; use "because," "therefore," "this means that"
- Justify: give reasons to support a choice or decision; explain why alternatives were rejected
- Evaluate: weigh up strengths and weaknesses; come to a balanced judgement; include specific limitations and realistic improvements
- Assess the extent to which: decide how much (fully? mostly? partly? not at all?); use evidence to support both sides; make a clear final judgement
- Suggest: you do not have to be certain — offer a geographical explanation that is plausible
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid:
- Do not just list equipment — always explain how it was used and why. "We used a tape measure" is worthless without "to measure channel width in metres at 5 sites, stretched horizontally at the water surface from bank to bank."
- Do not say "the results prove the Bradshaw Model" — results support or contradict a model; they do not "prove" it. Geography is probabilistic, not certain.
- Do not forget to mention anomalies — identifying and explaining anomalies demonstrates sophisticated analytical thinking. Ignoring them suggests you either did not notice or do not know how to handle them.
- Do not say "it was unfair weather" as your only limitation — this is too vague. Specific limitations score marks; vague ones do not.
- Do not confuse reliability and validity — reliability = consistency of results (repeating gets the same answer); validity = whether you are actually measuring what you intend.
- In evaluation questions, always name a specific improvement — not just "we should have done more measurements" but "we should have increased the float course from 10 m to 20 m to reduce the effect of timing inaccuracy at low velocity sites."
Quick Check: A student's results show that pebble size increases between Site 3 and Site 4 (i.e., pebbles get larger downstream at that point), which contradicts the Bradshaw Model. Suggest two geographical reasons why this anomaly might have occurred.
Any two of: (1) A tributary joins the main channel just upstream of Site 4, bringing large coarse sediment from a steeper channel into the main river, temporarily increasing mean pebble size. (2) Site 4 is located below a waterfall or rapid, which deposits large boulders that have fallen into the channel from the cliff face — these would increase mean pebble size locally. (3) Site 4 is in a section of the river with lower velocity than Site 3 (perhaps due to a meander), meaning the river can only transport smaller material at Site 3, leaving larger particles behind — when velocity suddenly increases at Site 4 it can entrain coarser material. (4) Human error: the student may have accidentally included a large pebble from the river bank (not the actual bedload) when collecting the sample at Site 4.
Quick Check: A student calculated a Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (rs) of +0.48 for velocity vs distance downstream using 14 data pairs. The critical value at 95% confidence is 0.536. What can the student conclude?
The student's r_s value of +0.48 is below the critical value of 0.536. This means the positive correlation between velocity and distance downstream is NOT statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. There is more than a 5% chance that the observed pattern occurred by random chance rather than reflecting a real relationship. The student cannot confidently conclude that velocity increases downstream in their study. They should consider: whether the sample size is large enough (more sites would increase statistical power), whether there are anomalies distorting the result, and whether the investigation was conducted in atypical conditions.
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