Each question describes an original map extract in words. Cover the answer, write your response using only the evidence given, then compare.
The skills come from physical and cultural landscapes on maps.
Part A: features and inferences
Question 1. An extract shows a river, a bridge, a mangrove symbol along the coast and a jetty. Classify each as physical or cultural.
Answer
Physical: river, mangrove. Cultural: bridge, jetty. Bridges and jetties are made by people, while the river and mangrove are natural.
Question 2. A symbol for oil palm covers four grid squares. State the observation and one inference.
Answer
Observation: oil palm symbols fill four grid squares. Inference: the land is used for plantation farming.
Question 3. A student writes: “The mangrove coast has a fish market.” The extract has no market symbol. Correct the sentence.
Answer
Remove the market: “A mangrove symbol lies along the coast, and a jetty beside it suggests boats may use this shore.” The jetty is shown, the market is not.
Part B: settlement and land use
Question 4. Fifteen houses line both sides of a straight road across a flat plain. Name the pattern and give a map-based reason.
Answer
Linear settlement. The houses follow the road, which suggests that access to the road influences where people build. The flat plain makes building easy.
Question 5. A plain has paddy symbols. A river flows beside it, and steep contours lie to the east with forest symbols. Explain the land use pattern with three clues.
Answer
The plain is flat, which suits paddy fields. The river supplies water. The steep contours to the east show slopes too steep to farm, so forest remains there.
Question 6. A cluster of 20 houses sits at a crossroads, with a padang and a mosque symbol beside it. Name the pattern and two features that support it.
Answer
Nucleated settlement. The crossroads joins roads, so people gather there, and the padang and mosque are at the centre, showing a shared focus for the cluster.
Part C: writing without unshown facilities
Question 7. An extract shows shop lots, a bus station and housing, but no school or clinic. Write two sentences explaining why the area around the bus station is busy.
Answer
“The map shows a bus station with shop lots beside it, which suggests that travellers shop nearby. Housing squares close to the station suggest that residents can reach buses easily.” No school or clinic appears, so neither is mentioned.
Question 8. Explain why the extract in Question 7 could not support the claim that “the area has good health services”.
Answer
No clinic or hospital symbol appears on the extract, so the claim has no evidence. A marker credits only features the map shows.
If you got these wrong
For questions 1 to 3, revisit map features versus inferred human activity. For questions 4 and 6, see linking settlement patterns to physical features.
Question 5 links to combining map clues to explain land use, and questions 7 and 8 to writing map answers without unshown facilities.
To go through your answers with a teacher, see online one-to-one Geography tuition.