AQA ECON1 and ECON2 Wednesday 3rd June 09 [new spec]

In part (a) questions on the new AQA AS micro and macro papers, students are required to provide a short definition of a term - the question carries 5 marks. But do students have to write at greater length to obtain full marks? The answer is no.

A reading of the examiners’ report from the January 2009 papers finds that

“To achieve full marks for part (a), a short but accurate definition is all that is required. As long as the candidate shows that they understand the term, full marks will be awarded.”

“Perhaps the main weakness when answering the early parts of the questions lay in writing too much and wrongly believing that, because the marks available were roughly double than had been the case in the legacy examinations, more needed to be written.”

“An accurate one or two sentence definition is sufficient for full marks. A whole paragraph is not required.”

One of the macro questions asked candidates to define ‘labour productivity’.

A simple statement such as ‘Labour productivity is a measure of the amount of output produced per person employed’ was sufficient to earn the marks.

A clear, concise and accurate definition is all that is required to gain full marks for part (a) of the data response question for the new specification. It is not necessary to write at length, but some candidates wasted valuable time by doing so.

Numerical examples can sometimes help - the report mentions that “With some answers, the verbal explanation was not entirely clear but the use of a numerical example demonstrated that the candidate understood the concept.”

This is important and useful advice and will help students to minimise time spent on the early questions allowing more time for the longer analysis and evaluation questions.