A-Level Economics Week 2 Exam Preparation Tips

Economics Blog 2: Reviewing Content

One of the most important things in preparing for A-Level Economics is making sure you know the content inside out, upside down, back to front and every which way possible. This blog will focus on how to make sure we’re approaching our revision in as many effective ways as possible!

Teaching friends/parents or even teaching yourself:

In order to teach a concept to someone else you need to make sure you know it and have revise the information yourself beforehand, which is the first benefit of attempting to do this. The second benefit is that if the person you’re teaching is not a fellow Economics lover like you, you’re often going to have to simplify the information to get it across to them!

Simplifying the information is an incredibly useful exercise for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, you can’t simplify and explain a piece of information to someone unless you 100% understand it yourself. If you get halfway through your spiel and you can see their eyes have glazed over (and it’s from confusion not boredom), then you’re not explaining it clearly enough, meaning you don’t fully understand it! Secondly, when simplifying it for someone else you are actually simplifying it for yourself, making the information is more memorable and easier to recall during exams.

Materials:

When revising the structure of large mark questions (essays) try using a white board (easy to edit/make changes) or scrap piece of paper to plan your answers first. Being able to scramble your thoughts together into an effective plan quickly and then to order the information in your head is an important skill. This is a great way to start building towards being able to develop a quick plan in a short period of time.

Blurting:

Another technique is to try using a technique called blurting! This approach is best done both before and after you start revising. To start, select a sub-topic and then list (in the span of about 10 minutes) all you know about that topic without the help of any resources. After this you can review the topic through videos, textbooks, your notes or making new notes on anything you missed in your original blurt! After this take a break from the topic and move on to something else. Then practice the blurting technique again, but this time you blurt should be more in depth than the one you did prior to studying.

Context:

Incorporate context in large mark questions. This is where reading case studies is most vital as it shows the examiner that economic content was engaged with outside of the taught material (examiners LOVE this). Also, that the concepts you have been studying throughout the two years can be directly applied to the world around you.

To remember this information, look at current world events that are interesting to you and after doing some research, connect the information to core economic concepts that you have been studying. By doing this you will prepare yourself to relate key concepts to the questions you face.

Going through content:

Revising content, going through your notes, and making revision notes is a key step in all revision. For Economics’ the length of this process is determined by how confident you are with certain topics. The Cornell method is the simplest and one of the most effective ways to make notes, because it requires you quickly write a summary for them at the bottom of the page! Give it a quick google or look on YouTube for examples and give it a go! A great way to condense your notes into summaries is to read through them again and with a highlighter extract the most important parts. This also creates colour association, therefore you will associate the colour of your highlighter to important concepts and be more likely to remember the information!

Graphs/quantitative skills:

Practicing quantitative skills in Economics, especially in graphing, extrapolating, interpolating, and identifying trends is also a key thing to focus on in your revision. Again, try using a whiteboard and colour coding different lines to make the graph more memorable, helping you to recreate them from memory in an exam. It is also important to remember the main discussion points for specific graphs. For this:

1. Make cue cards with a simple rendition of the graph.

2. Make sure it is colour coded, labelled, and drawn well.

3. The name of the graph/concept should be included.

4. A maximum of 8 bullet points should be included.

At the end of this process, you will have produced a range of cue cards for all your important graphs with bullet points on how to discuss them to memorise for the exam.

Multiple choice questions:

Making sure to practice multiple choice questions as these are really easy ways to gain a lot of marks. They involve a simple elimination process to find the correct answer.

For multiple choice questions, find a method that works for you. Personally, I find the elimination method best:

1. Read the entire question thoroughly.

2. Read all the choices.

3. Go back and read all the choice even more closely and the cross out the ones you know are wrong. Physically crossing them out will prevent you from going back and doubting your choice.

4. Do this until you are left with one option, critically examine if it answers the question. If it does then move on to the next question, if not then begin the process of elimination again.

Most these tips will take you up to the exam but make sure to start them now!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Mehnaz. Mehnaz will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Mehnaz will answer them in these sessions.