OCR AS Level Geography Past Papers

Resource booklet questions carry significant marks and reward candidates who read the materials carefully before attempting answers. Before writing any response, spend at least five minutes reading each resource and annotating: identify any numerical trends, geographical patterns, anomalies in the data, and how the resources relate to each other. Questions that ask you to 'use evidence from the resource' must be answered with specific data — a statement like 'the graph shows an increase' scores fewer marks than 'the graph shows that global mean sea level rose by 3.3 mm per year between 1993 and 2020.' For physical landscape process questions, answer in terms of the sequence of processes rather than listing individual processes in isolation. For coastal erosion: wave energy is the driving force; hydraulic action (pressure of water compressing air in cracks), abrasion (sandpaper-like erosion by sediment in waves), attrition (sediment particles colliding and wearing each other down), and corrosion (chemical dissolution of carbonate rock) are the mechanisms; and the resultant landforms (wave-cut platforms, caves, arches, stacks) are the outcomes. Structure your response around this cause-process-outcome sequence. For Geographical Debates, case studies must be specific and current. In climate change questions, the IPCC's AR6 (2021) projections provide credible data — a 1.5°C threshold of warming is projected to be reached by the early 2030s under current emission trajectories. In food and water security questions, data from the UN FAO, UNICEF, and the World Bank provides authoritative evidence. Avoid vague case studies ('a country in Africa') in favour of named examples ('Ethiopia's vulnerability to drought is compounded by population growth and land degradation, as documented by the UN OCHA').