purpose of this video is to take you through step by step and show you how to answer the map skills question from paper two of the igcse cambridge geography exam all of the resources from june 2019 question paper 2 2 the exam paper which this video is based on can be found in the comment section below how you can use this video well this video will show you how to complete these particular questions in the exam it will offer you hints and tips on how to approach these questions so my advice with these if you have the exam paper in front of you follow complete at the same time and then have a go at doing another pass question so just to recap what this map skill question entails it is worth 20 marks out of a possible 60 of paper 2. it is compulsory it's a 90 minute exam and so i would recommend that you spend 30 minutes completing these questions and the questions tend to be based on either settlement and or rivers now before the exam you will need the following equipment a protractor to do bearings and direction a ruler to help you measure distance and to calculate more accurately six figure references pencil and sharpener and of course a rubber so most paper 2 questions 10 map skills questions tend to start by you having to give them a figure and then having to identify various features land uses or heights from that figure now my first exam tip to you your map i would draw on the box of figure 1.1 onto the a3 map that is provided to you the reason why is that it helps you to maintain focus whilst completing the exams because instead of looking at the whole map you are squaring in on the location that you need to focus on so what to remember the map extract and the figure are the same by that i mean the grid squares are the same distances the same length two centimeters by two centimeters and that's really important to remember when completing these questions particularly when you're looking at distances doing the cross cross-section and measuring six-figure references so you need to find on the map the features from figure 1.1 as you can see here i've circled them for you and then match them up so we need to focus on a to do that you look at the key which is often found at the bottom of the map or on the reverse and so here i've looked at i've taken the little snapshot here and i need to match up the symbol with the symbol from the key now i'm focusing on the first symbol here because it's an x it looks like a circle with an x not a circle with a plus sign and so in order i'm looking at the first one so the first word i need to write is masked and indeed in the mark scheme it says mast not tower so continue again i've just taken a snapshot from the key we can see here b b other major building now here it looks like a range of colors it could either be an industrial area or a rock outcrop so choose the first one you think it could be for me there are no mountains so i'll probably put an industrial area next one yep it looks more like the parish church and then now i need to calculate the height so this is a spot height and so i need to look it up it's 39 meters so if i look at the mark schemes again yep mast got that other major building i can allow industrial building okay again um industrial area or allow rock outcrop because as i said the colors look the same i can put a church or a parish church not a problem and 39 meters now the reason why you need to choose the first one if there's a list for example here parish church or other church because the mark scheme says if there is more than one answer and one is wrong equals naught so you must put the first that one that appears only one answer not right for example parish church other church so that's the first five marks out of twenty again straightforward take it nice and slowly look at the picture and be sure that you've matched up the symbol up correctly with what's on the key now other questions you might do is you might have to describe the features of the river shown on the map now remember command words of this question describe right you write what you see so when it comes to writing the features of the river i like to think of the bradshaw model but with the bradshaw model you can only really see a change in width on a river on a map you can't see velocity you can't see the depth of the river you can't see things like the load that's carried there and you might be able to employ the slope angle purely based on the gradient if it's going from a steep environment and then it's flattened out because there are lack of console lines so if you're thinking of a branch of model from a map can you see how does the channel width change has there been a change in gradient you can't really focus on the others so what other features can you consider of the river well you can look at landforms what landforms can you see along the river you can usually there are waterfalls marked on the or rapids marked on the key you can certainly see meanders tributaries confluences and you might be able to imply the direction of the river again the width tends to help you here if the width is narrow in one part of the river and gets wider towards the bottom or towards one side then that implies the direction the rivet is flowing in because obviously the river gets is narrower in the source and flows towards the south where it uh towards the mouth where it gets wider so if i take the extract here what we need to focus on you can see there are lots of meanders in the river there are a few tributaries and so you can make a note of those and if you want to look at the direction of the river well again if you look at the northwest part of the map where the name of the river is it's very narrow and towards the southeast of the map again it gets wider so we can say the direction flows from the northwest to the south east so what to write again is the described question so four marks four features of the river so we can say the river gets wider as it flows towards the southeast there are many meanders and tributaries i've written although two brief sentences i have focused on four features of the river so if i take a look at the mark scheme flows to southeast tick variable width yep certainly it gets wider as it flows towards the southeast so i can get that there are tributaries i could have mentioned conferences and they're in the answers so again when looking at this question and you're asked to review about the um features of the river think bradshaw model yes but only focus on the width and the gradients and then think about other features of a river landforms in particular meanders tributaries confluences and the direction the river is flowing in another common question to ask on map skills is asking to describe the differences in relief between two areas so here we've got a map extract and if you remember what i've said draw on the box of the map extracts onto the map hand out the a3 piece of paper because that helps you to focus on what you need to do so here you can see i've drawn on the area and i've just taken a snapshot here of where i need to focus and you can match it up see we've got the e22 here e22 going through the center of the map and we've got the various places so think to yourself what is relief you should know the definition by now relief is the height and shape of the lands so recap first part of the definition how can we work out the height on a map well we have three main methods we have spotlights and triangulation pillars and we have contour lines so here you can see the triangulation pillar it's kind of like a more accurate um spot height and it tells you the height so spot height would just be a brown or black spots here's a triangulation pillar and you can see the height is often next to it the 262 meters and the contour lines join line of equal height in this particular case 200 meters to work out the difference in contour lines you would need to see find the next thick bold line and then for the minor lines work out the difference between the two is here so i think this is probably 250 meters and so there's one two three four lines so they're probably going up in 10 meters so again the second part of the definition height and shape of the lands how can we work out the shape of the land and again this is where contour lines are very useful now remember contour lines the closer the lines are together the steeper the lands and so you can use words like steep gentle slopes maybe hilly mountainous steep sided valleys and these are other some common features formed by contour lines so if the river flows through here obviously it might be a valley sort of up you got a v here steep side slopes a cliff and a plateau so again you must have a vague idea in your head what types of light what landforms look like based on the contour lines so remember before answering this question draw on the box of figure 1.2 onto the a3 map and again if it helps you put on a and b or whatever the places are that you have to compare and so we now need to describe the differences in relief between area a and b now another exam tip for you when comparing two different locations include the names of both locations in each of your points remember this is a described question so you have to pick out a number of differences and in this particular case three differences because it's three marks so if we was compare area a and b well area a the contour lines are much closer together than area b so we can say that area a has steeper slopes than area b there are still slopes around area b we can also say due to the contour line so i can see i can see 150 125 meter lines about area a is certainly higher in height than area b the only line i can see is a 50 meter line and i can't see any others and so i can use that map evidence to help me describe the height of the lens so area a has a higher maximum height of around 140 meters whereas b looks to be around 50 meters so if i look at the mark scheme a is steeper yeah i've said that one mark a is higher again stated that one mark and i've quoted some of the heights so through including the names of both locations it makes it easier for the examiner not to take marks away from you and again you're describing it so three points so you have to d of differences you have to describe now another common question they ask on map skills is something like this where you have a cross section now a cross section is you if you slice the land down the middle what would you see often the line is incomplete so a common question to ask is for you to draw and complete that line or they might have labeled on um something like a feature p feature queue or you have to label on a particular feature onto this line to do this question in reverse so the first thing to remember is that the distance between x and y on your exam paper is exactly the same 9.5 centimeters as what appears on the map so in this case p is found about five centimeters along the line and q is found about 8.1 centimeters along this line so if i was to take the map extract i would draw a line between the two points again that helps me to focus i put my ruler along that line and remember i said exactly the same distance between x and y on the map as it is on the figure and so at p five centimeters along i can see the e22 road again i'm having to identify a feature not a landfall at 8.1 centimeters i can see there is a river so again i've got the river there and i've got a um e22 road now if i have to complete the console lines i need to work out first what the contour lines are going into and from here it looks like they're going up in about five meters again along the line what i'm going to do is work out what distance i need to draw so in this case three centimeters and then if i go along my line so if naught at the bottom left every time my black line crosses a contour line i'm going to mark that one so it goes here here and again all the way along until i get to three centimeters because the next three centimeters is what i'm going to do is work out the height so north is about 170 and i can use the contour lines and going through each point i can roughly work out because i've worked out that the console lines going up in five meters that at the various distances i have these um different heights so when i go back to my contour lines i'm going to draw up to naught centimeters i'm going to draw on roughly 170 165 0.7 so on and so on and so on until i have drawn all the dots on and i've connected them with a nice curved line and again if i look at the mark scheme land rises over 150 meters but below 180 and again i've done that so it's really important that with these questions take it nice and straightforward you mark on the lines you measure it with your ruler make a little note somewhere on your exam paper on a scrap piece of paper and then carefully draw them on and connect the dots now other map skills that you might be asked to do common one is measure the distance of a piece of road or river or something like that so when you have to do that again you need to find out where you're asked to start from so in this particular case where the e22 crosses the river and where it's going to end towards the east of the map so again on my map i'm going to draw on these two locations and just double check yes that is the river i have to focus on so another exam tip is divide up the root into as many straight parts as possible so i've got a straight part here another straight part so i've dived up into three relatively straight parts let me get my router and i'm going to measure the distance in centimeters so here 2.5 3.1 and about 2.4 centimeters so main notes i'm gonna add them up so i get eight centimeters i put it on my scale so one centimeter was fifty thousand centimeters in real life so one centimeter equals five hundred meters eight point one times five hundred it's four thousand meters and so my answer is four thousand meters look at the mark scheme four thousand meters so again how to recap divide up the root into as many straight lines as possible measure it with your ruler add the total work out the scale and then do the simple maths another one could be compass direction so you should have in your mind a compass now really you shouldn't have expected to know north northeast but the main ones north north east east south east south and you should also know what the bearings are for north 000 or 360 north east 45 east 90 degrees and you can work out what the halfway points are and again you won't get this in your exam but it's always quite a nice thing to do again on the scrap piece of paper is to quickly draw down a compass with um the bearings so i have to start off at so i've got my little compass here at where the point where the road crosses the river and i have to go to the east of the map now i'm asking to go from where the e-22 crosses the river to where it meets the eastern edge of the map so in that particular case i am starting from where the e22 crosses the river and i'm going towards where it meets the eastern edge of the map where it ends so north i'm starting at um the point where the road crosses the river so that's my north point okay because obviously the top of the map is always north unless the map stays otherwise so if i get my retractor and i measure the bearing here is about 79 degrees i put it onto my rough compass and so i know i have to go not quite east something like northeast northeast or east okay so i can write that down east or east northeast remember choose an answer so let's go east look at the mass scheme east so again when working out the compass direction it's when you need to have your protractor work out the bearing with naught at the top go down to 80 degrees or 79 degrees put it on your compass that your comes with the bearings that you quickly drawn and then you can work it out and again another question could be the bearings again this is when your protractor comes really use is really useful you've got start point you've got the end points i need to measure the bearing so here it's about 77 to 80 degrees so i said about 79 and we know that is correct another common question that might come up is you calculating the six-figure degree of reference you should know by now how to do and work out a six-figure good reference but i'm going to show you how to do it accurately using your ruler and then in questions like this making sure you get the correct answer so you need to find the feature you then need to find the bottom left hand corner of that grid square and then calculate the four figure grid reference so as you should know along the corridor to 36 that's the blue line in line with the bottom left-hand corner and then go up to 98. now once you've worked that out and you have a list of options you can go through and perhaps start to um eliminate ones that aren't true you could do this by putting little dots on the left hand side so we know 3698 so it cannot be that one because that says 37 and it cannot be the bottom one because it was written in 98 first not 36. so we've now worked out the four figure reference we need to now work out the third and sixth number so if we measure the grid square we will see there's a two by two meters square therefore every two millimeters equals one point for the six figure grid reference the third and sixth number obviously with naught being the highest sorry not being the lowest and nine being the highest not being on the line and nine being very close to the line so if we start with 36 right we've got some options here we've got uh naught or two so naught roughly okay so yes to not quite not but it's just slightly shy of not the location of the bridge where it means the river if it was two the line would be quite far away so we know it cannot be the bottom one so we have a choice of the top two so we have to decide well remember so for the six figure reference every two millimeters is one point and the grid square is a two by two centimeter square so we have it we need to work out where three and seven go well seven takes us to uh actually crosses where the bridges and three is below that line so it cannot be three it must be seven so we put a tick because that's what the question asks us to do and we rub out any lines or dots that we might have been asked that we might have used to eliminate the possibilities again if we look at the mark scheme and interestingly here we would have got two hole marks making it accurate or one if we had put 983 but remember for six figure references do use your ruler double check that is a two by two centimeter grid square take it nice and slowly eliminating the possible answers if you are asked to calculate the six-figure reference again go back through how i showed you how to work out the six figure references and use the ruler to make sure you are accurate with your um with your location your grid reference because you might actually get hold two marks and thank you for watching this video is about 20 minutes long and so you would if you'd be able to watch this video and you're getting confident with these skills you should be able to do this question with lots of time to spare to make sure you've accurately completed this part of the exam paper so just remember any boxes or lines that you are asked from the figures of the exam paper draw them onto the a3 map to make sure you are focused on the area or line that you need to work from take it slowly and practice thank you