Adding context to exam answers
A selection of headlines in the last 24 hours:
- Householders hit at mortgage rates rise
- Maximum waiting time at Heathrow’s terminal 3 was breached more than 100 times in 15 days
- Microsoft has invested $300mn to rival Apple and Amazon in the e-book market
- The cancellation of the Badminton Horse Trials due to a rain-sodden course will cost insurers £3mn and local businesses thousands more
- Global labour market ‘alarming’
- Double-dip - does it matter?
- Rate of pub closures is slowing
- Top tax rates hit four million people
......so many news stories at the moment, which students could use as evidence to help strengthen their points in essays. Too many to write up a blog on each one - but I might try to vary the revision lessons at the moment by taking in a selection of cuttings from the newspapers and asking students to imagine essay titles, topics and paragraph points which each one might be used for.
Can you compete under pressure?
The BBC has a study under way to analyse the psychology of pressure, which will offer “...a new look at why some people are particularly prone to pressure, while others cope rather well.” Not surprisingly, with a launch at this time of year, the introduction to it focuses on exam pressure, and relates it to the pressure faced by athletes and others who have to perform to their best at a set time and under set conditions. The comparison is a good one; facing your A level exams means that all of the work you have done in the last two years comes down to how well you can perform in just two hours or so in the exam room. The study is introduced with an article by Matthew Syed who competed for Britain at the Sydney Olympics, in which he looks at the working assumption that such pressure is a fact of life, and therefore we should practice techniques to learn the best way to deal with it.
read more...»Preparing for the AS Economics Macro Paper 2012
This comprehensive new revision presentation by Geoff is designed to provide support for AS Economics students (and their teachers) in the final stages of their revision for the Unit 2 paper on macroeconomics.
read more...»Revision Toolkits for Economics & Business Pre-Released Case Studies - Summer 2012
Our popular revision toolkits for a range of pre-released case studies in Economics and Business Studies units are now available to order. Some are already available and the rest will be despatched once complete in the next 2-3 weeks. The follow resources can now be ordered:
AQA BUSS4 Section A Takeovers and Mergers 2012
AQA Applied Unit 3 - Summer 2012
OCR A2 Economics Unit F585 June 2012
Edexcel A2 Business Unit 4a Toyota
OCR GCSE Business Unit 3 (J293) Summer 2012
OCR GCSE Economics Unit 593 Summer 2012
OCR AS Business Studies Unit F292 Summer 2012
OCR A2 Business Studies Unit F297 Summer 2012
OCR Applied Business Unit F242 Summer 2012
OCR Applied Business Unit F248 Summer 2012
Exam Advice: 10 Ideas for a Better Economics Paper
Here are some thoughts on ways to improve your scores on your summer economics exam papers. They are in no particular order but I hope some of them might be useful
Ten Thoughts on Improving Your Economics Papers
Streamed presentation
PDF handout version
AS Micro: Last-minute Unit 1 Exam Tips!
Our Year 12 economists are all departing on Friday for study leave, so I’ll be going through some key points they should bear in mind for their exams. Read on for a unit 1 tips sheet and other info…
read more...»Exam Advice: Multiple Causation
No doubt you have found in your revision that many factors can influence the direction of a single economic variable. For most key issues there are many short-term and longer-term contributing factors and strong students are aware of multiple causation and can bring this explicitly into their answers. For example:
*The causes of unemployment (demand and supply side causes): Presentation here
*The causes of inflation (cost push and demand pull, domestic and external): Presentation here
*Reasons behind changes in the exchange rate (trade, foreign direct investment, other capital flows, central bank intervention): Presentation here
*The many factors that the Bank of England and other central banks take into account when setting policy interest rates: Presentation here
*Causes of economic growth in both the short run and the long run (AD and LRAS causes): Presentation here
*Multiple causes of market failure and of government failure: Presentation here:government failure
*The reasons why producer cartels are often unstable: Presentation here
*The factors driving globalisation (and more recently de-globalisation): Globalisation blogs here
Examiners will always reward students who make an attempt to use relevant economic analysis and make it clear that several factors affect a particular economic variable (inflation, investment spending). Often we make use of the ceteris paribus assumption to isolate in theory the effects of one variable – but the real world does not allow this to happen! Challenging the ceteris paribus assumption can also add weight and value to your answer.
Exam Advice: Putting Things in Context
High level economics students at AS and A2 seem to have a happy knack of putting issues and debates into a clear context and this certainly counts as evaluation and scores good marks in your papers. Here is a brief revision note on the importance of context!
Exam Advice: Maintaining Balance in your Answers
In AS and A2 economics exams, especially in the essay questions that require evaluation, axaminers will always reward students who adopt a balanced approach and those who try to reason out and explain their arguments i.e. they demonstrate an awareness of different points of view / different schools of thought in Economics
Examples might include:
*Monetarist versus Keynesian views on the impact of fiscal and monetary policies as instruments of demand management during a recession
*The arguments for and against the Coalition’s plans to eliminate the structural budget deficit over the next four years
*Polluter-pays principle (carbon tax) versus tradable-permits (carbon trading) versus regulation as means of cutting emissions and addressing environmental market failure
*The arguments for and against manipulation of currencies as an instrument of macroeconomic policy
*Competing views on the relationship between economic growth and its long-term environmental impact.
*Different schools of thought on the benefits of competition versus regulation in a market
*Free market forces versus state intervention approaches to reducing child poverty or poverty in general
Discussion of competing theories leads naturally into good evaluation – For example, you may be asked to evaluate how well the free-market performs and the circumstances in which there may be a case for non-market (state) provision of goods or services or other forms of government intervention.
Maintaining a semblance of balance means avoiding extreme views or assertions that are never backed up with any evidence or examples. The final section of your essay answer does give you an opportunity to come to a reasoned conclusion that favours one side of an argument of another - but do this having considered a variety of arguments and perspectives rather than a narrow, blinkered approach!
