1. What do you need to do to score well

2.  In these type of questions, just name and locate  Don’t write in a nice, grammatically correct sentence Examples  Exxon Valdez, south coast of Alaska  Carlisle flood, north west England, 2005

3.  Don’t write any more than 3 sentences for your description section – 4 at a push  You’ll be unlikely to get any more marks if you write more especially as you only have 10 minutes max.

4.  Specific facts will get you a higher mark / grade  ‘… includes elaborated description…’ is a direct quote from the Grade A/A* mark scheme  Specific dates or figures will enable you to do this

5.  Something either did or didn’t happen  Do not say things like ‘animals may die’ or ‘this could endanger many jobs’  Say ‘animals died’ or ‘this endangered many jobs’  Get this wrong and you drop at least 1 mark / grade

6.  Explanation is key. You can’t get above a Grade D without it.  Use the ‘So’ technique to develop it – keep using ‘So’ and you will be able to elaborate. A good point about this would be that new jobs are created. This is good because some unemployed people will get jobs there SO they will earn more money SO they will be able to spend more money in local shops SO the shops will be busier SO they take on more workers SO those workers have more income. AnswerExplanationElaboration

7.  You are likely to only have about 10 minutes max. for these questions so use your time carefully  After 4 minutes you need to look to move on to the explanation section  If you are running out of time, focus on the ‘Explain’ section – its worth more marks

8.  If a question says, for example, ‘Explain how it affected people and the natural environment’ you must cover both people and natural environment in your answer.  Only cover 1 of them and you limit your potential grade.  Explanation about 2 different points for each (people and environment in this example) is enough.

9.  If a question asks you to refer to different groups of people you MUST NOT refer to ‘Local People’.  You can refer to ‘Local home owners, local elderly people, local environmentalists etc’ but just local people is too vague.  If you are writing about pollution, which type of pollution? Visual, air, noise, water etc?

10.  Try to be as accurate as you can  Do you mean ‘a moose’ or ‘a mouse’? One letter can make a massive difference!  Poor spelling can drop your grade by 2 at worst i.e. you get D instead of a B

11.  This means both content and the format / skills.  Sounds obvious but it’s the most important thing!