A case study earns marks when each fact is tied to what the question asks, not when it is recited in full. Choose the two or three facts that match the task, then say how each one answers it.
This page shows the habit with an invented case, and a short ledger method to keep facts honest.
What does the mistake look like?
The student writes everything they remember about the case in the order they learned it. The answer reads like a timeline: a date, an event, a figure, a management plan. Each sentence may be true.
The problem is that the task asked for something narrower, such as a cause, a comparison or an evaluation. Facts that do not serve the command stay as background and earn nothing.
What causes it?
Two habits cause most of it. The first is learning cases as stories, in the order events happened, so the facts are locked to one route. The second is learning no purpose for each fact, so the student cannot tell which one answers “why” and which answers “how far”.
Weak source checking adds a third problem. A figure with no date or source may look convincing but cannot be defended.
Worked example
The case below is invented for teaching. The place, date and figures are not real.
Task: “Explain why the impacts of a flood were greater for low-income households.”
Invented case file, Town Z, flood in 2019: river burst its banks after three days of rain. 40% of homes on the floodplain were single-storey. The clinic closed for two weeks. A flood warning reached households by loudspeaker only.
A memorised answer: “In 2019 Town Z had a flood after three days of rain. The river burst its banks. Many homes were damaged, the clinic closed and a warning was sent by loudspeaker. The council later built a wall.”
It is accurate, yet it never says why the impact was greater for one group.
A linked answer: “Low-income households in Town Z were more exposed because 40% of floodplain homes were single-storey, so water reached the whole living space. They also had fewer ways to recover, since the clinic was closed for two weeks and a loudspeaker warning gave little time to move belongings. These links show that exposure and recovery, not rainfall alone, explain the larger impact.”
What changed: three facts were chosen, each was tied to the word “greater”, and the last sentence named the reasoning. The wall was left out because it answers a response question, not this one.
A short ledger for every case
Use the Geography evidence and case-study ledger to record three things for each fact: the verified fact with its source and year, your interpretation, and the question still unanswered. The ledger flags a statistic with no year as incomplete rather than current. The statistics and distribution explorer helps if your case includes numbers that need summarising.
For each case, also write one sentence for a cause, an impact and a response. That gives you a flexible set instead of a script.
Check yourself
Use the invented Town Z file above.
1. Which fact would you use for the task “Explain why the warning system was ineffective”?
Show answer
The fact that the warning reached households by loudspeaker only. Link it: a single channel cannot reach people who are asleep, out or unable to hear it, so some households had little time to act.
2. Why is “the council built a wall” a weak choice for the flood-impact task above?
Show answer
It describes a response after the event. The task asks why impacts were greater, which is about exposure and recovery, so the wall does not answer it.
Where to go next
Work through case-study reasoning, then extended geographic explanations to practise ordering linked reasons. The clinic on needing a current primary source for a case study covers checking facts, and the learning guide shows how cases connect to the rest of the syllabus.
If you have tried this and your cases still do not answer the task, a teacher can read your answer with you. See online one-to-one Geography tuition.