ECONOMICS RESOURCES

[insert]

What's the best secondary resource for Economics 3&4.
comments from prior students? which one was most helpful and was of the highest value to you?

[chasej]

Send Sent this in a PM to someone asking pretty much the same question a month or two ago:

I had both economic fundamentals in Australia (which was used in class) and economics down under (as a supplement). I found the fundamentals book to be pretty good actually. The problem with economics textbooks is that the either tend to be to basic or too complex-fundamentals finds a good balance. The fundamentals book is published by a small business based in Melbourne and put together using mostly Microsoft Office which is why it looks quite amateurish-it is still the best book around in my opinion for the content alone though. The down under book I didn't really use that much as the fundamentals book covered all the content I needed and the down under book tended to go into complex details I didn't really need to know.

A study guide I used quite heavily was the CPAP VCE economics study guide (yes it is published by the same company that publishes the fundamentals textbook) -units 3 and 4 books are published separately. The CPAP guide is updated pretty much up until a week before printing so it is very up to date and has good economic statistics and events to learn to use as examples in responses. The CPAP study guide is basically the fundamentals textbook condensed into a smaller book. I wrote notes out of the fundamentals book and used the CPAP guide to make sure I didn't miss anything. This study guide also includes some book practice SACs and multiple choice questions I found useful in SAC prep.

A lot of people I know also used the Indigo study guide and thought it was quite good as the study guide explained everything simply so it was easy to understand the hard concepts and then you could build up knowledge by reading the more complex books. I had a copy of indigo but hardly used it as I prefer just to throw myself in the deep end personally.

Cambridge Checkpoints I didn't find so great for economics as the notes were not so great and the questions are available from the VCAA website-not worth paying for checkpoints in my opinion.

I would recommend you buy no more than 3 different resources as there's a point where you have to much and just underuse stuff you paid for. The fundamentals+indigo+something else if you wish, or, fundamentals+CPAP study guide+indigo are a good combination IMO.

[abcdqdxD]

Indigo study guide was invaluable for learning new concepts