AQA A2 Economics Exam Technique/ Essay Technique

Firstly, knowing the content inside out is a MUST.

For A2, keeping up to date with regular affairs and having good/up to date contemporary examples + figures (especially for Macro Unit 4) impresses the examiner and gives you that extra few marks with reinforcing analysis.

Also, the mark scheme is your best friend - the MS has a clear structure to how to word your essays - that's what examiners want to see. The evaluation answers on there give you a taster for the sort of high-level thinking required for top level marks.

Think of essay structures like a burger (this is what my teacher said, lol)
The top bun = Intro/define important definitions.
Burger = 3-4 meaty paragraphs with good 'chain of reasoning' - they want to see you can raise an idea and follow it through with relevant textbook concepts/own knowledge/quotes from sources/graphs
The bottom bun = Conclude/evaluate your ideas - assess the extent/how or who it effects/long term short term policy ideas/ is it efficient-equitable-effective solution?

Tutor2u is awesome with essay help, I suggest you go on their website for tips for good essay technique too.

Thanks so much for the help

I've already started looking at the mark schemes and I've already felt I'm improving.

As for the structure, do you think it's better to do 3 points and a big evaluation instead of 4 and a brief one, as the evaluating is the most important factor for the level 5 marks.

Always found tutor2u helpful, but there's too much irrelevant information on there sometimes, but I'll definitely give it another look.

Just out of interest, do you know anywhere where I can get exemplar essays, so that I can see what the essay include? Been looking for a while but can't find any.

Anyways, thanks a lot for the help I really appreciate it

It really depends, 3 points/paragraphs of well argued analysis and evaluation can easily get you good marks. Maybe even mention a 4th one if you have time.

Yeah I agree, tutor2u does have LOTS of info - but specifically this is awesome (scroll down for the powerpoint slides):
http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/exam-technique-for-a2-economics-weesteps-to-evaluation

I terms of exemplar essays the only one I know of is from AQA itself here: http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-2140-W-TRB-CEXWECON4.PDF (they're not all A* quality, but one of them definitely is) - I printed this off and analysed the structure/keywords like hell

THOSE SLIDES ARE GREAT!!! Really helpful stuff, thanks!

Thats the only exemplar I've found too, but it's good the way you can see what the low marking students didn't do as opposed to those who got top marks (the one where they got 15/15 then 14/25 is useful, because that's the stage I'm at atm) so hopefully given a few weeks practice I should get it down pretty well.

Thanks again for the advice, i really appreciate it

It really depends, 3 points/paragraphs of well argued analysis and evaluation can easily get you good marks. Maybe even mention a 4th one if you have time.

Yeah I agree, tutor2u does have LOTS of info - but specifically this is awesome (scroll down for the powerpoint slides):
http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/exam-technique-for-a2-economics-weesteps-to-evaluation

I terms of exemplar essays the only one I know of is from AQA itself here: http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-2140-W-TRB-CEXWECON4.PDF (they're not all A* quality, but one of them definitely is) - I printed this off and analysed the structure/keywords like hell