How to Answer Map Questions
Students are often unduly scared of map questions. Very few teachers actually require students to be active cartographers. Teachers do want students to have some sense of geographical relationships, and, for this reason, will sometimes test them with passive recognition map questions. In such testing students are presented with a map, already drawn, and asked to identify certain items. Look for a "key" on the map in order to be sure that you recognize correctly the symbols used for cities, borders, bodies of water, etc. Be sure you understand the map's directional perspective: most maps today, but not all, are oriented with "north" on top (medieval world maps often placed Asia on top, that is the East--hence the word "oriented"). Be careful to indicate your choices clearly on the map or elsewhere as indicated.
The main reason students find map questions difficult is that they fail to study for them. Even students who read a text carefully, underlining major passages, may overlook the maps found there. Maps are placed in texts for specific purposes and should be read. One reason that students ignore them is that they often contain too much information. Maps in textbooks frequently attempt to plot all places mentioned, even sites where the artifacts depicted in the illustrations happen to have been found. To get around this problem, students should highlight maps in exactly the same way that they highlight text, using a highlighter to distinguish major places discussed in the text and in class. Take special note of items that rated chapter subheadings, that were spelled out by the teacher on a blackboard or in Power Point displays, or that were identified in class on a map. Usually a map will not need to have more than a half dozen items highlighted. If you mark up maps, then, when studying for a test, you can review your map highlights in exactly the same way that you review text highlights.