I too will be lingering around (with as much spare time as being a yr 12 student will allow) answering questions if anyone has next year.
If anyone ever wants to ask me a content specific question I would prefer if you posted here on the forums instead of PM as a forum post allows others to learn and contribute to the answer as opposed to a PM which doesn't...if you post on the forums I would see it. Feel free to PM about more general questions.
A few tips:
Economics is an understanding subject, not a rote learning subject. Of course rote learn definitions and whatnot but when it comes to actually learning the content don't just memorise for example don't rote learn "a larger fiscal deficit is an expansionary budgetary policy as blah blah blah", actually aim to understand
why a larger fiscal defect is expansionary-when you are answering questions in SACs/exam the answer shouldn't come from your memory but rather come from your ability to understand the way the different ideas are connected, this would come intuitively if you understand instead of rote learn.
Always stay ahead of your class. I cannot emphasise this enough. I always stayed 1 or 2 chapters (using economic fundamentals text where each chapter is ~4-5 key knowledge points) ahead of my class. You will spend much less time studying if you stay ahead as in class you will be furthering your understanding instead of being introduced to the topic like many of the others in your class. This instantly puts you ahead, and without trying to sound pretentious, when it comes down to SAC rankings, you want to be ahead of your class wherever possible. When pre-reading it's a good idea to have a highlighter and pen to annotate your text etc. it would help you learn easier to "interact" (for lack of a better word I can think of) with the text.
For summer holiday homework I don't recommend learning the course any further than U3 AOS1 (unless you're doing 3/4 without 1/2 in which case you should probably go through the whole of unit 3 to familiarise yourself with the economic concepts which were taught in 1/2). Do this in addition to the work your teacher told you to do of course. Nothing is stopping you from learning the whole course before term 1, I just don't suggest you do as you'll probably be wasting your summer.
If you want to write notes use the various key knowledge dot points (found in the economics study design
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/economics/EconomicsSD.pdf) as headings as you will be making notes and irrelevant stuff you don't need to know otherwise. If you won't write notes than still make sure to tick of the dot point headings as you learn to make sure you are learning the right stuff. If in doubt about what you need to know ask your teacher or AN. I recommend you write notes but I know some people don't learn well with notes so your choice as to what you want to do.
You don't
need to do a lot of prac SACs/exams in economics, although I did a fair few practice papers and I improved dramatically as a result. Don't do pracs to learn the content, make sure you understand before you begin them. And once you understand then do prac papers until you feel ready (normally when you begin to reach your goal for what marks). I found TSSM and CPAP to be the best commercial papers but don't bother buying any yourself as your teacher should have plenty to give you-if you're school has insufficient prac resources then pressure them into buying more (hopefully your school would have sufficient funds
). If you're school really can't get any in and you need them you may have to resort to buying them yourself.
If you aren't up to speed with economics news/events I recommend you learn what's been happening to the economy over the last 4-5 years (since 2009-10) as a fair bit of the course focuses on that. Don't become an expert on economic history but gain a knowledge on the key economic indicators and the factors that have been behind their fluctuations. (e.g. learn about the recovery from the GFC, the resulting inflationary pressures, than the low growth etc. etc. that occurred over the last few years). sam.utute suggested some good sources for this information. Personally I didn't go to any extra effort to keep up with current events as I already read the paper/watched the news daily-I recommend you do that not just for this subject (though you should for this subject) but to broaden your world view
.
ALWAYS ask any questions you need to ask. There are no stupid questions. If you look at my post history over 2013 you would see I would have asked some pretty basic questions myself. Some areas of this course can be hard to understand and this course really builds on what you learn over the year so you can't afford to miss out on information. Seriously, it's a really bad feeling to be sitting in a SAC and encounter a question on content you didn't fully understand but didn't ask your teacher about (it happened to me and I would have full marked the SAC if it wasn't for that one question)-it's just a silly way to lose marks as it's really avoidable. Ask your teacher or AN (tbh your teacher if they are good is best).
Also around the middle of the year the treasurer would make a budget announcement one night where they outline the the federal budget for that year (the 2014-15 one is next year's). If you are free try to watch that and record it if you can (it should be put up online though). Budgetary policy is a key part of unit 4 and will probably cover a large part of the exam so pay attention. Use the budget speech and the subsequent news papers released the next day (sam.utute suggested the newspaper thing to me at the "theage vce expo thingy"
) as a springboard to begin understanding the current budgetary policies. You also need to have an understanding of budgets released over the past 4 years but the budget that you learn in and out should the most recent at the time of the exam (you guys are going to have an interesting budget to do as it is the first full one written by the coalition since the new study design).
Edit: there's an app called "economics tutor" published by R Salla from CPAP which is a must have if you have an iphone. For less than $2 you get hundreds of unique multi choice questions sorted by topic targeted at VCE study design. Seriously there is no reason not to get the app as it is sooooo much cheaper than any other resource.
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Wow, this is much longer than I expected, better head to sleep as I'm going away tomorrow morning. I'll add some more advice as I think of it over the holidays.
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