AO1 — what examiners reward and how to write for it

CCEA Geography is marked against four Assessment Objectives. AO1 carries roughly 35% of total marks and rewards what you know: named places, locations, processes, environments and scales (local → regional → national → global).

What AO1 questions look like

AO1 dominates short-answer command words: state, name, identify, define, describe. Mark schemes for these questions list specific facts and reward each one with B1.

Typical AO1 prompts:

• "State two reasons why birth rates are high in Niger." (2 × B1)
• "Define hydraulic action." (1 mark for definition)
• "Name a UK city that has experienced regeneration." (1 mark — Belfast, Liverpool, Manchester all valid)
• "Describe the location of the Mourne Mountains." (B1 for compass direction + B1 for named feature, e.g. "south-east of Northern Ireland, around the town of Newcastle, County Down").

Locations CCEA expects you to recognise

Scale	Examples to memorise
Local (NI)	Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, Newcastle, Lisburn, Strangford Lough, Mourne Mountains, River Lagan
National (UK)	London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Boscastle (flood case study), Holderness coast
Continental (EU)	Bay of Naples (Vesuvius), Italian Alps, Paris
Global	Tokyo, Mumbai, Lagos, the Sahel, the Amazon, the Sahel, the Pacific Ring of Fire

Processes vocabulary to deploy

Physical: erosion, weathering, deposition, hydraulic action, abrasion, longshore drift, freeze-thaw, mass movement.Human: urbanisation, counter-urbanisation, migration (push/pull), globalisation, industrialisation, suburbanisation.

Scale awareness

Examiners reward students who explicitly link local cases to regional/national/global processes. Example: "Coastal erosion at the Holderness coast (local, ~30 cm/yr) is caused by Atlantic-driven storms (national/regional) intensified by anthropogenic climate change (global)."

CCEA tip

If a question gives a named figure or location, use it in your answer. Examiners look for the place name; substitute generic phrases like "a UK city" lose AO1 marks even if your reasoning is correct.