What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0460 Geography papers and filtered to tectonic hazards. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on tectonic hazards, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Writing "subduction" and stopping. On its own it is Level 1. Say which plate subducts beneath which, and that it is the denser oceanic one.
- Naming the boundary type twice and expecting Level 2. Mark schemes state that naming the margin is Level 1 no matter how often you do it. The movement, the friction, the pressure and the release are what lift you.
- Using a constructive boundary to explain an earthquake, or a conservative or collision boundary to explain a volcano. Mark schemes will not credit them.
- Giving plate names and thinking that is place specific detail. It is Level 2 development. Level 3 needs settlements, dates, times, magnitudes and figures.
- Answering a volcano question with a country. Several mark schemes cap a country name at 5 out of 7. Name the volcano.
- Confusing magma and lava. Magma is underground, lava is at the surface.
- Confusing focus and epicentre, or defining epicentre without mentioning the focus below it, which loses the mark outright.
- Confusing abrasion of the load with tectonic vocabulary from other topics. Keep tephra (all ejected fragments), ash (the fine fraction) and pyroclastic flow (the moving cloud of gas and rock) distinct.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Tectonic hazards revision notes.