Scholarship Geography 2014What is expected of you.

A Geography Scholarship Candidate’s Attributes:

Confident and competent

Feel for Geography

Understands geographic concepts and ideas

Can apply knowledge from one setting to another

Why sit this exam?

And the money, of course!

The exam itself…

• Has a resource booklet (about 20 pages of material – graphs, maps, text, cartoons, poems etc) – this year around the theme of urbanisation, urban growth

• Generally has had three questions of various sources that require answers using the resource booklet and from beyond the resource booklet

How to approach Scholarship Geography

Understand the meaning of the Performance Standard Understand the Assessment Specifications.Understand the command words.Plan questions and consider how to best use the three hours of exam time. Practise questions under exam conditions, answering under a time limitation

HOW EACH PAPER IS MARKEDEach Question is marked out of 8 according to the relevant descriptors:

• A - PD1: Superior Scholarship standard answer – a mark of

8 or 7

• B – PD2: Good and competent Scholarship standard answer

– a mark of 6 or 5

• C – PD3: Just makes Scholarship standard – a mark of 4

• D – Falls just below scholarship standard – a mark of 3 or 2

• E – Well below scholarship standard – little of relevance or

very incomplete answer – a mark of 1 or 0

WHAT COMMENTS DO MARKERS MAKE?

You need to have a good geographic understanding i.e. name the continents and countries correctly

You need good geographic knowledge such as giving other case studies beyond what is taught in class

You need good English skills – how to write and plan an essay

Better students use the planning pages effectively and can highlight useful material well.

Finally - Scholarship students need

Diagrams and justifying your ideas

Creating diagrams/Illustrated diagrams

• If so you must include a diagram of some type

• It should be original not copied from resources• It should be appropriate to the answer• It should be referred to in the text not an add on

at end• It does not need to be complex – a simple star

diagram or converting a table to a graph is often sufficient.

B

CD

E

A

x

y

z

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Justify

• to provide or be a good reason for (something)

• Prove your case