Geography Fieldwork

As part of the Geography syllabus, students have a study about settlements in the Maltese Islands. Students research how the settlements developed over the years and study their sphere of influence. The chosen settlement for this year’s study, Mosta is a large town that developed over the past decade into a major shopping area, especially on Mondays when the hawkers market is in full swing.

The Sphere of Influence is also known as the catchment area of a settlement. This is the size of the area served by the same settlement. The larger the settlement the greater the number of shops or services and a wider variety. Therefore this area has a wider area from where people are travel to get to it. This means there is a larger sphere of influence.

As part of the fieldwork the students had to form a questionnaire and ask the consumers in the area a number of questions related to the main three hypotheses:

• -        The sphere of influence will extend more to the north than to the south.
• -    Most people will travel to central Mosta to shop on foot.
• -        Consumers buy more low order goods than high order goods.

Once the students gathered enough questionnaires to prove or disprove the first two hypotheses presented to them they were asked to map out the market – mainly Constitution Street - and list each and every shop as selling high or low order goods. Eventually, this exercise would help provide results to conclude the third hypothesis.

The students enjoyed the opportunity to engage in an out of class activity. Through the questionnaires the students had to chance to interact with people, from various walks of life, doing their shopping from the Mosta market.