Essay tips for CIE exams

This is something that might be of use leading up to the exams:

Ten strategies for improving your evaluation skills in data response and essay questions

1. Make good use of your final paragraph – avoid repetition of points already made 2. Look for key stem words in the question – build your evaluation around this 3. Put an economic event, a trend, a policy into a wider context 4. Be familiar with different schools of thought e.g. free market versus government intervention 5. Be aware that a singular economic event never happens in isolation especially in a world where economies are so closely inter-connected. 6. Question the reliability of the data you have been given 7. Draw on your wider knowledge to provide supporting evidence and examples 8. Consider both short term and longer term consequences (they are not always the same) 9. Consider both positive and negative consequences 10. Think about what might happen to your arguments if you drop the “ceteris paribus” assumption

Economics is rather like a jigsaw, if you do enough reading, thinking and revision, eventually the pieces really start to fit together and finally you can see the whole (bigger) picture. Tutor2u.net