Good case-study answers use a few facts chosen for the question, not a recited essay. Learn a bank of verified facts, then pick the ones that answer what is actually asked.
This lesson follows verifying place, date and source. It is the step that turns a clean note bank into a focused answer.
How do you choose which facts to use?
Ask three quick questions of each fact. Does it answer the focus of the question?
Is it specific, with a place, number or name? Does it help build a reason, rather than only describe?
A fact that fails the first question stays in the bank. The same habit helps when you read a distribution: look for what matters to the question, not everything on the page.
Worked example
Invented data. The question: “Explain why the flood in Town K affected so many homes.” Your bank holds these verified facts:
- 280 mm of rain fell in 24 hours (14 Oct 2015).
- 3,200 of 8,000 homes flooded.
- The town sits on a low floodplain beside the river.
- The drains were built for lighter rain than fell.
- The mayor visited the area on the second day.
- A school hall was used as a shelter.
Step 1, find the focus. “Why so many homes” asks for causes of the scale, not the response.
Step 2, sort. Facts 1, 3 and 4 explain why. Fact 2 shows the scale. Facts 5 and 6 are responses.
Step 3, build a short answer. “Heavy rain of 280 mm in 24 hours fell on a low floodplain, and drains built for lighter rain could not cope, so 3,200 of 8,000 homes (40%) flooded.”
The answer uses four facts, each tied to the question. Check the percentage: 3,200 ÷ 8,000 = 0.4, so 40% holds.
The mistake to watch for
The usual slip is to write everything you remember in the order you learned it.
Mistaken answer: a paragraph that starts with the history of the town, lists the shelter and the mayor’s visit, and mentions the rain near the end.
The facts are true, but most do not answer “why so many homes”.
The correction is to start from the question and pick from the bank. If a question asks about responses next time, facts 5 and 6 become the useful ones.
Check yourself
1. From the bank above, which two facts most strongly support “explain why the flood was hard to manage”?
Show answer
Fact 4 (drains built for lighter rain) and fact 1 (280 mm in 24 hours). They show the flood was larger than the system was designed for.
2. In another invented town, 1,800 of 6,000 homes flooded. What percentage is that?
Show answer
1,800 ÷ 6,000 = 0.3, so 30%.
3. A village has 45 flooded homes out of 900. Is “a huge share of homes” a fair phrase?
Show answer
45 ÷ 900 = 0.05, so 5%. That is a small share, so the phrase is not supported. Quote the figure instead.
Where this leads next
Now that you can pick facts, the next step is connecting them: link causes, impacts and responses. The food-web and energy-flow explorer is a useful model for practising linked chains. If selecting still feels like guesswork, online one-to-one Geography tuition lets a teacher test your choices on fresh questions.