This is the sixth in the Subject Guides series, which gives detailed advice on how to study and score well for specific subjects. It features a compilation of best practices from top students, including their exact study strategies for A-Level Economics.
Generally, the most popular JC subject combinations are:
- BCME or PCME (Biology/Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Economics) for Science stream
- HELM or GELM (History/Geography, Economics, Literature, Mathematics) for Arts stream
As we can see, A-Level Economics is a common subject choice for students in both the Arts and Science streams. It is also a new subject offered only in JC. And unlike GP (General Paper), it is not a convenient extension of a secondary school subject (English) that at least offers some familiarity.
As such, it may take some getting used to. Figuring out early on a study method that is truly effective will give you amazing returns in the long run.
Since I didn’t take Econs myself (yay to China Studies in Chinese), I decided to ask students from top schools how they studied for the subject.
Overwhelmingly, a few phrases kept reappearing:
- answer keys / model essays
- essay plans / essay outlines
- actual questions / past year papers
It seems that these are truly the three key pillars of success, especially when it comes to studying for the Econs exam. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Pair Understanding With Memorising
As with all other subjects, when you’re learning Econs and all the novel concepts for the first time, understanding is crucial. We keep seeing this all-powerful pair of “Understand + Memorise” over and over again, including with regard to studying Science subjects. To further convince you of their worth, here are some words of wisdom from A-Level graduates:
Before you can even start, you really need to understand and know the content like the back of your hand. Just plain memorising won’t work; Econs is testing so much more of application than it seems to be.
Understand on top of memorising. Know your theories well and take care to use the right terms and definitions because a big part of Econs is explaining “common sense” with the economic framework.
Step-by-Step Guide: Using Answer Keys, Essay Plans and Practice Questions
Beyond understanding and memorising, the next logical step would be to apply that knowledge. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, from all the experiences shared by different students, we’ve already identified the three key resources for studying Econs. But how exactly do we make use of them?
Based on all the responses, I distilled the advice into a step-by-step approach:
1. Read Model Essays and Answer Keys
Almost everyone mentioned model essays and answer keys as invaluable resources. Some pointed out that these are superior to school notes, since they are more concise and give the exact points that will score you an A. From their experience, once you grasp what kind of answers the examiners are looking for, “it gets way easier”.
Here’s a helpful list of things to look out for when reading model essays:
- how much content to write
- the kind of evaluation needed
- the overall flow and structure
One suggestion was to highlight repeated phrases as you read model essays—these are most likely key points to incorporate into your own essay. Another recommended that you read both the answer key and the markers’ comments.
2. Write Essay Plans
Write out the essay plan in point form for different questions. It may be helpful to work through the questions by topic and keep these as something to reference to before the exams.
Importantly, you should then cross-reference with answer keys and identify which of your points match with the marking points, and which are redundant.
3. Do Practice Questions and Papers
While less efficient than essay outlines, it is worth investing some time to attempt actual questions. It goes without saying that answer keys are, once again, crucial for you to assess your own response. Teachers’ feedback would be valuable if you can obtain them, by submitting your work or arranging consultations.
Overall, I would say spend 60% of your time reading/writing notes, and 40% trying questions/reading model answers. Some people make the mistake of spending most of their time on notes only to realise they didn’t know HOW to answer questions – so it’s important not to overlook the practice aspect in Econs!
Additional Advice for Tackling the Exam
Lastly, here are some tips for the actual paper, from A-Level veterans:
You really have to know what the questions are asking for and always, always have an end-goal statement/conclusion in mind before planning your answers.
Conclusion is super important! It’s the easiest to earn marks so time management is key.
Be very explicit with links in your explanations and clear with key terms and details. So instead of jumping from A to Z, you have to go from A to B go C, and so on. My Econs teacher structured the explanation as “What” → “Then what” → “So what”.
For case study, I felt that jotting down the concept beside the relevant sentence helped a lot. So when I’m answering the different parts behind it was much faster to fish out the information that I needed to reference back to. For example, simply writing “cyclical unE” was enough to highlight the main concept of that particular sentence or paragraph. It saves a lot of time when completing the case study since time is so short.
A major thank you to everyone who selflessly shared their experience, gave invaluable advice and contributed to this article in one way or another. Feel free to leave a comment below or drop me a message anytime. Don’t forget to check out the other articles in the Subject Guides series too.