The second question on the AQA units 1 and 2 papers asks students to identify features of selected economic data - usually in the form of a chart and/or table. The question carries 8 marks. I produced a quick revision exercise on this aspect of the new paper a few weeks ago and it is available for download here.

The January 2009 Examiners’ reports make for important reading once again

“For part (b), the candidate only needed to identify two distinct features of the data and use figures to support their description. Many candidates understood this but some of the answers were far too long.”

“Some candidates did not appear to realise that figures must be quoted. Also, despite the instruction to ‘identify two main features’, there were a few candidates who just provided a chronological description of the chart in words.”

“Numerous candidates adopted the familiar trawl approach instead of taking an overview and providing broad points of comparison, backed up by some illustrative statistical data. Maybe the fact that 8 marks are now available for this question led many candidates to the view that a lot of writing was necessary. This is not the case.”

Good advice .... I will be drilling my students on this in the weeks ahead.