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It is not
unfair to say that teaching A-level is examination-loriented.
From teachers' point of view, past examquestions can indicate the
direction and focus of teaching. Therefore,
public examination paper setters should carefully consider whether the
exam papers can assess students' ability, knowledge and skills.
This short article aims at reviewing the 2000 paper and revealing
the important feature.
Paper 1
An analysis of
the paper reveals that there are some features worth mentioning:
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The
coverage, except Section A, is quite well balanced. There was no
question on the "Biotic system" in Sectinon A.
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Different
from the papers in the past few years, skills like statistical
calculation and drawing of graphs have not been tested.
Many questions asked candidates to interpret information from
graphs, diagrams or newspaper cutting only.
This may give a wrong message to teachers and students that the
drawing and data calculation skills are no longer important.
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Many current
issues were added to the questions.
New terms such as biotechnology' and itransnational firms' were
found in the questions. It
suggests that candidates should pay more attention to current
developments and apply
their knowledge in the explanation of these current phenomena.
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This year is the
third year of introducing a compulsory map interpretation question.
The question of this year was very different from the past
years'. The line of thought
was similar to some GIS analysis. Although
the instructions were clear and actually the question
was easy, the candidates need to be calm and careful when answering this
question. As the format was
new and the question was long, it might have frightened some candidates. It was also doubtful whether it had tested the essential map
interpretation skills.
| Question |
Topic |
Skills
required |
| 1 |
Map
interpretation question - development of theme park |
Simple
GIS analysis |
| 2 |
Types
of weathering as a response to climate |
Diagram
interpretation |
| 3 |
Atmospheric
heat budget & climate in urban areas |
Diagram
interpretation |
| 4 |
Channelization
of river |
Photo
interpretation Reading graph |
| 5 |
Man-land
relationship in desert |
Diagram
interpretation |
| 6 |
Biotechnology
in agriculture |
Getting
information from newspaper cutting |
| 7 |
Changes
of fartning land use in Hong Kong |
Reading
figures |
| 8 |
Location
of transnational corporation |
Getting
information from newspaper cutting |
| 9 |
Changes
of population density from the city centre in different time |
Reading
graph |
| 10 |
Population
changes by districts in Hong Kong |
Reading
figures |
| 11 |
Solid
waste and landfill capacity |
Reading
graph |
Paper II
The coverage
of Paper H is more balanced than Paper 1. The level of difficulty of the
questions, with the exception of Q.2 & Q.8, was similar.
Besides this, the following features should be noted:
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The question on
"Climatic system" (Q.2) was very different from those in the
past. Its main focus was on
the changing climatic condition caused by human activities. Students
might find it very difficult because they did not know how to gather
evidence to explain such phenomenon.
They also found it difficult to describe the effect of human
activities from local, regional and global scales.
Traditionally, sixth form students did not like answering
questions on climatic system. It
was doubtful whether a lot of candidates would attempt this difficult
question.
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The first part of
Q.6 only required students to recite the model.
As an A-level question, this part should share a smaller
proportion in the question Q.8 was rather vague.
"Information technology" was a badly defined term.
Students might just discuss the role of information technology in
affecting industrial location instead of explaining how it affects the
other industrial location factors.
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Q.11 is a good
question. In the past, we
always emphasized on the bad effects of cities but this question tried
to focus on some good points that cities brought about.
| Question |
Major
Topic |
| 1 |
Causes
of slope failure; slope processes in different landscape &
role of vegetation in maintaining slope stability |
| 2 |
The
role of human activities in changing the earth's climate |
| 3 |
Soil
in tropical desert; causes and solutions to soil degradation |
| 4 |
The
importance of maintaining biodiversity; how developers and
environmentalists affect biodiversity in TRF; ways to reduce its
loss |
| 5 |
Wet
rice cultivation as an agricultural ecosystem; how better yield
can be achieved and evaluate its effectiveness |
| 6 |
Von
Thunen model and its applicability in today's highly urbanized
parts of the world |
| 7 |
Causes
of flooding; measures to minimize its impact and evaluate their
effectiveness |
| 8 |
Describe
how information technology helps to facilitate cross-border
production and its effects on industrial location |
| 9 |
Institutional
factor as an industrial location factor; its importance in
countries of market economy and Hong Kong |
| 10 |
Internal
land use of a city; applicability of Harris and Ullman's model on
land use pattern of present-day cities |
| 11 |
How
cities are described as success and cancer; ways to minimize the
cancerous aspects |
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