Along with English, Leaving Cert geography is one of those exams where students need to be particularly careful about their timings. With short questions as well as up to seven essays to be written in 2 hours and 50 minutes, it is very common for students to be scrambling at the end of the exam to get all the questions finished. For a higher level student, I would suggest spending 25 minutes on the short questions, 10 minutes reading the long questions and then 30 minutes on each long question. A good tip I give to my students is to write a timing plan with actual times on the front of their exam paper so that when they look at their watch and it’s, say, 10.45 they know that they should be midway through their second question. Students should also be familiar with the concept of a SRP, Single Relevant Point, which is how the corrector will be marking your paper. A typical essay type long question will be worth 30 marks at higher level meaning that the student is required to write at least 15 relevant individual points to gain full marks.
Along with English, Leaving Cert geography is one of those exams where students need to be particularly careful about their timings. With short questions as well as up to seven essays to be written in 2 hours and 50 minutes, it is very common for students to be scrambling at the end of the exam to get all the questions finished. For a higher level student, I would suggest spending 25 minutes on the short questions, 10 minutes reading the long questions and then 30 minutes on each long question. A good tip I give to my students is to write a timing plan with actual times on the front of their exam paper so that when they look at their watch and it’s, say, 10.45 they know that they should be midway through their second question.
Students should also be familiar with the concept of a SRP, Single Relevant Point, which is how the corrector will be marking your paper. A typical essay type long question will be worth 30 marks at higher level meaning that the student is required to write at least 15 relevant individual points to gain full marks.
It’s also worth doing one last check over the layout of the paper to avoid any confusion on Friday morning. There will be 12 short questions, you should try them all and you will be marked on your best 10. You then need to choose one from three physical geography questions, one from three regional geography questions, one from three human/economic elective questions and finally, at higher level, you will do one question from the three option questions you have covered with your teacher.
Make sure you know the basics of OS map reading and are able to use 6-figure grid referencing to locate specific points on a map. Also be familiar with how to locate a building on an aerial photo, for example if a church was on the lower right side of an oblique photo then it would be located in the right foreground.
In almost every year’s exam students will be required to draw a sketch map of an aerial photo or OS map. I’ve seen students lose easy marks because they make simple mistakes here. The first step is to draw a frame that is in proportion to the dimensions of the map or photo. The easiest way to do this is to measure the width of the map or photo and then halve it for your sketch. Repeat the same process for the height and don’t forget to add in a title and a key to gain full marks.
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