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Is this accurate advice for Econ HL?


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I know there are already threads that have given tips about different question papers but I wasn't really able to guage my answer from them.

Recently on my school's mock Economics exam I scored the highest 7 yet, but that being said I don't think my teacher has been teaching IB long (his first year at my school) and I felt like he was being very lenient with the marking on my Paper 1, so I managed a 23/35. I definitely knew my concepts, but a few of my diagrams were just a little bit off, and I have been told that this can actually loose you a LOT of marks at a time. I attempted the Micro-based question on Oligolpolistic market structure (and I love theory of the firm) but those diagrams can be fairly tricky. On the other hand another long-time economics teacher has been telling me to just never attempt theory of the firm questions on paper 1 becauseI will probably always mess up my graphs and fail -.-

ALSO, the second part of this question is whether or not I deserved relatively good marks on my Paper 3? The one with the case studies and 8 mark evaluation questions after each case. This other economics teacher also told me that I should aim for roughly 4 points advantages, 4 points disadvantages. For a 15-mark question where I have 35 minutes alone to write this is plausible. But working in about 15 min for this in my case, this is a heinous suggestion. Maybe it's because I write too much on a 4 mark question but I try not tooo... I draw the diagram and explain it, it usually takes up a page/page and a half. But this teacher continously marks my practice papers and gives me less points for 'weak evaluation'. PLEASE HELP :( I need a 7 in economics and I don't want to screw up these papers.

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I agree with arra on the theory of the firm part.

The second part, about evaluation, there are three things you have to remember:

1. Advantages & Disadvantages (like you mentioned)

2. Effects on stakeholders (consumers, producers, government...)

3. Prioritize your arguments. (Policy X is more effective in blah than policy Y, because..)

Using these methods in your evaluation should earn you high(er) marks. ;)

And one thing that should speed up the process of answering the questions is this: Do not answer the questions the way you would answer them in your A1 exam. You don't need to sound so professional or use complex sentence structures. What you need to do is to answer the question and do it clearly. Define the terms, get your graphs right, in Paper 3 quote from the text and keep your explanations short and sweet.

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I agree with arra on the theory of the firm part.

The second part, about evaluation, there are three things you have to remember:

1. Advantages & Disadvantages (like you mentioned)

2. Effects on stakeholders (consumers, producers, government...)

3. Prioritize your arguments. (Policy X is more effective in blah than policy Y, because..)

Using these methods in your evaluation should earn you high(er) marks. ;)

And one thing that should speed up the process of answering the questions is this: Do not answer the questions the way you would answer them in your A1 exam. You don't need to sound so professional or use complex sentence structures. What you need to do is to answer the question and do it clearly. Define the terms, get your graphs right, in Paper 3 quote from the text and keep your explanations short and sweet.

Thanks :) Sounds pretty good, should definitely help me get my answers straight. Eeh, yeah I have what my teacher calls Diarrhea of the Mouth -.-

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