guide to eco?

[ben_ess12]

i no its not even next yr yet ,

however i was wondering if students from this yr could give some advice to way to tackle eco next yr

how to answer q's
study
all the usual nonsense!

i didn't do 1/2, i did busman 3/4 this yr. is there anything i should do over break to prepare or?

[inspire]

How to answer questions?
You will develop your own way of approaching questions.

Study?
For unit 3 i generally just read. but for unit 4 i started doing questions because i reckon its more difficult.

Dw you dont need eco 1+2 to be tank at eco 3+4! If you understand the core concepts of unit 3. Aka Low inflation/ Growth. You will be able to tackle the WHOLE eco course easily because everything ties back to these goals.

I guess i'll upload my Eco notes mid jan for you guys LOL
so look out

Good luck

[chrisjb]

i no its not even next yr yet ,

however i was wondering if students from this yr could give some advice to way to tackle eco next yr

how to answer q's
study
all the usual nonsense!

i didn't do 1/2, i did busman 3/4 this yr. is there anything i should do over break to prepare or?

HOOOLLLLLYYY CRAP I just wrote a page long answer to this then accidentally clicked out of the text box and clicked backspace and lost it all! Well... here goes again:

Pretty much everything that inspire said, you'll develop your own method of answering questions. Just try and figure out how the marks are allocated and remember it's generally 3 lines per one mark.

You don't need to have done units 1+2, I didn't and I turned out alright. Just make sure you pay attention during unit 3 and study hard for U3 over the summer. It's necessary to understand all of Unit 3 well to do well in U4.

As for study, the following resources made up the bulk of economics study. I only used the textbook for 10-20% of studying and for practice questions.

1) mrwood.com.au (He used to have a really good formspring account too, but he deleted it cos people sent in crap)
2) rba.gov.au (RBA website. Read the speeches (most of them you can listen to online anyway) and read the statements on monetary policy and the quarterly statement thingys. Also HOLY SHIT CHART PACK! HELL YES! I spent so long looking over these charts! They're so interesting! And 3 of them featured in the eco exam, just copied and pasted from the RBA website. Two of them (Household savings and GDP growth) I had more or less imprinted in my memory from looking at them so many times!)
3) The Financial review (mind you, you will look like an absolute ponce buying one of these)
4) The business section of the age
5) This forum
6) The IMF statistics page (some other people use another statistics site, but I like the IMF one more)
7) ABCNews24

Probably, I spent around 50-60% of my study time on Mr Wood's site and the RBA site, then the rest supplemented that. I don't think I ever read the final half of unit 4 of my text book, you'll use it less an less as the year progresses.

[Random_Guy]

I did really well in Eco 1&2, but it was pretty easy cos it was all theory. I'm just really worried that Eco 3&4 requires you to know a lot of actual and current events, because I never ever watch the news! So I need to start watching the news now, so can someone please give me some tips on which news to watch (ie. What channel, what time, which newspaper, how should I take notes while watching the news). Thanks!

[chrisjb]

I did really well in Eco 1&2, but it was pretty easy cos it was all theory. I'm just really worried that Eco 3&4 requires you to know a lot of actual and current events, because I never ever watch the news! So I need to start watching the news now, so can someone please give me some tips on which news to watch (ie. What channel, what time, which newspaper, how should I take notes while watching the news). Thanks!

Watch ABC or SBS news, read the business section of The Age (I tried reading the Herald Sun business and world sections once... they were AWFUL) and read the RBA releases. It's actually quite fun once you get into it! Eco and International Studies became my favourite subjects because I could read so much about real world events, and give my two cents over global and domestic issues.

I took notes on newspaper clippings for the first half of term 1, but didn't bother after that. You'll notice the same statistics coming up over and over again to the point where stats are drilled into your mind. Sometimes if there was something I read that I didn't fully understand I would use a bit of paper to go through it and work it out, but other than that I didn't take notes regarding the news.

At the very least, watch the ABC news at 7:00pm, or the SBS news at either 6:30 or 9:30. I did most nights, usually I would watch the first bit if there was something interesting regarding International studies, generally the Arab Spring or Euro cirsis, then stay on to watch Finance.

I still pretty much do all this stuff even though I've finished, so it wasn't so much homework for me as it was leisure time I would've just watched the news and read the paper all day if I could've

[Tashi]

I did really well in Eco 1&2, but it was pretty easy cos it was all theory. I'm just really worried that Eco 3&4 requires you to know a lot of actual and current events, because I never ever watch the news! So I need to start watching the news now, so can someone please give me some tips on which news to watch (ie. What channel, what time, which newspaper, how should I take notes while watching the news). Thanks!

My teacher loveddddd anything written by Ross Gittins in the Business Day (The Age). He actually writes with the VCE course in mind so all his articles are easy to understand and relate well to topics you're studying. Articles that Mr. Wood posts are really great too, and it's fun to contribute in the comments section. Don't worry about watching the news every night or reading the paper every single day; basically you just need an overall knowledge of what's happening in the world currently (which is pretty easy considering how the world's economies are of such importance right now). You'll need to know a few specific stats but by the end of the year they become ingrained in you.

Good luck!

Oh and practice HEAPS of multiple choice!!! And probably in the middle of the year start practicing 8 mark questions because I bet there'll be one on next year's exam.

[hala_madrid]

yeah, what tashi said. dont waste your time trying to keep up to date with everything every night. just for your sacs and by the time the final exam comes around, you should have at least maybe 5 or so factors in 2012 alone that have affected eco activity memorised