Zimbabwe Form 1-4 (O-Level) Geography

This course aims to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of geographical principles, concepts, and skills, focusing on both physical and human geography. The syllabus emphasizes practical application, critical thinking, and decision-making, encouraging students to analyze spatial patterns, environmental relationships, and the dynamic nature of our world.

Key Features of the Syllabus:

• Graphicacy Skills: Students will develop skills in interpreting and communicating spatial information through maps, photographs, graphs, and other illustrative forms.
• International Awareness: The course fosters understanding of global issues, enabling students to make informed judgments on economic, political, social, and environmental matters.
• Environmental Awareness: Through studying physical and human geography, students develop an appreciation for the environment and its challenges.
• Local and Global Development: The syllabus equips students with the knowledge and attitudes necessary for understanding local, national, regional, and world development.

Assessment Objectives:

Students will be assessed on their ability to:

• Knowledge and Understanding: Demonstrate geographical knowledge in context, understand underlying processes of landscapes and spatial patterns, analyze landscape changes, and consider environmental interrelationships.
• Skills and Their Application: Apply basic skills of observation, recording, and interpretation; utilize various secondary source materials; present and interpret data graphically and numerically; and communicate information and conclusions effectively.
• Judgement and Decision Making: Understand the role of decision-making in human geography, apply geographical concepts to interpret situations, and prepare, justify, and evaluate solutions to environmental and socio-geographic problems.

Syllabus Content:

The syllabus is divided into three main sections:

Section A: The Physical Environment

• Weather and Climate Studies: Air masses, rainfall types and patterns, frontal systems, simple weather maps, climate and climatic types, people and the weather, and weather hazards.
• Landform Studies: Landforms resulting from folding, faulting, and volcanic activity; earthquakes and their effects; weathering processes and resulting landforms; and rivers and their uses.
• Biotic Studies: Factors influencing vegetation growth, ecosystems, and people and ecosystems.

Section B: The Human Environment

• Natural Resource Studies: Types of natural resources, exploitation of resources, population and resources, effects of resource development, and conservation of resources.
• Agricultural Studies: Factors influencing farming, the farm as a system, and farming types in Africa.
• Industrial Studies: Factors influencing industrial location, types of industrial location, transnational industries, the character and distribution of industry in Zimbabwe, and service industries (including tourism).

Section C: Settlement and Population Studies

• Settlement Studies: Factors influencing rural settlement patterns, rural resettlement, urbanization, town morphology and functional zones, urban functions and sphere of influence, and the quality of rural and urban life.
• Population Studies: Distribution of population in Africa, growth and structure of population, migration, population, health and disease, and transport and trade.

Assessment:

The examination consists of two papers:

• Paper 1 (40%): Forty multiple-choice questions covering all syllabus topics.
• Paper 2 (60%): Nine structured, free-response, and data-response questions. Candidates answer four questions, one from each section and one other from any section.