Im doing awful in economics

[FaisalH]

Hey everyone,

My first month marks just came out and im doing good in everything except economics and my school called my dad to tell him to come to the parents meeting on saturday (i got a 2 in economics) perhaps theyre gonna tell him that i should change it and my options are european history sl, world religions sl, and the history teacher told me that its really difficult and i already missed out on lots of the material so what should i do? need quick replies and thanks in advance

[Black Bird Lockheed]

Economics is not at all a hard subject unless you learn the basics of the subject. In fact many people score 6/7 and unlike history wherein you have to learn all the dates/ incidents, in Economics you just need to apply the basics in every question. The four major component to get in full marks in economics is to incorporate all these four components in Paper 1 Question or d part in Paper 2:

1) Definition: Learn all definition, in mark scheme you will find that they are giving 2 marks for def. The more you learn, the better for you.

2) Diagram: One of the important part of Economics, diagram is asked in almost all question. You might be losing marks in this area I guess. Do NOT rote learn diagram. Just learn some basic fundamentals like, if the questions says the crops have damages due to famine, you should automatically make out that supply will shift left (or decrease). the best way to master diagram is practice,practice and loads of practice.

3) Evaluation: One of the weak areas, once again I feel. Evaluation can be pretty tough sometimes but otherwise much more easier to tackle. IF you are told to evaluate, first discuss the reason why the problem exists, or the govt gives subsidies (depends on question), discuss its advantages and disadvantages, discuss how it will affect different stakeholders (consumers/government/firms). And at last you need to discuss the consequences of the following policies/economics problems and conclude by giving your suggestions.

4) Examples: Better to give current examples, like present exchange rate/inflation rate, recent tax and measures imposed by govt etc. This gives the examiner very good impression that you are reading newspaper daily (which they exactly want) and you will end up in scoring in 7.

So what I feel is that you are lagging behind in diagram/evaluation component. So my advice is read and understand chapters, then practice the past papers and most importantly, CHECK whether your answers are correct or not correct. In starting I faced the same problems, but my teacher started to give us test after test and made us to check answers.You can easily, do it. Good Luck!

Edited November 7, 2013 by akash jishnu

[yii yann]

It is possible that you are simply not getting into the "economics" style of writing.

All of your answers should be pretty much bullet points with some prose in between. What I mean by this, is that your answers have to be full of actual content and not just filler. It is then up to your linguistic skills in order to form it into a proper essay, and not simply numbered points.

A 10 mark question should have 10 points - any less and you'll not hit the full 10 marks. This goes for everything, even evaluation.

I can't explain how to answer questions better than Akash has, so refer to that for help in that area.

It is worth checking out past papers and their answer schemes - you'll see what I mean. If you follow that format, you will do well in the subject.

It is also a good idea to get a very good textbook to teach you. Economics for the IB Diploma by Ellie Tragakes is honestly the book for this. It explains everything in deep (sometimes a little too much) detail. It also follows the "bullet point" way of explaining, something which you should develop when writing about economics.