Hey guys! As the name suggests, this guide is about how to write a band 6 Business Studies report in section III of the HSC exam paper. Often many students fail to achieve the band 6 range in this section due to their lack of knowledge about the content, as well as poor structure, form and consistency. There are four main keys to achieving high marks in this section of the HSC paper:
1. Know the syllabus
2. Structure
3. Case studies
4. Understand the marker’s perspective
Knowing the syllabusThe concept of knowing your syllabus is absolutely vital in all your subjects, in particular Business Studies with the overwhelming amount of content. Questions can come from literally anywhere in the syllabus, and a student must have enough deep knowledge to write a consistent and logical report for around 50 minutes. You can find a detailed guide on how to memorise the syllabus
here. You’ll find this extremely beneficial in many circumstances, as the knowledge will allow you to plan out your report accordingly in terms of structure, and paragraph topics. For example, the 2014 Business Studies HSC question was:
*Scenario*
You have been hired as a consultant to write a report to the management. In your report:
• Recommend a source of finance for the factory expansion
• Discuss outsourcing overseas compared with the factory expansion
• Explain the global factors that need to be considered if they decide to use outsourcing as an operations strategy
If you were to stumble upon this question in an exam, knowing the syllabus would be extremely important so you know exactly what to write about. The question asks for:
• “Sources of finance” – knowing the syllabus would immediately make you choose form long-term and short-term financing, as well as equity and debt financing – in this situation you would choose 2-3 sources of finance and write about them in detail
• “Discuss outsourcing” – this would require you to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing (comes under Operations in the syllabus)
• “Global factors” – this issue comes under Operations as well, and includes global sourcing, economies of scale, scanning and learning and research and development
Thus it is very clear, that my knowledge of the syllabus allowed to know exactly what I want to talk about in my essay, and how much I should talk about each topic.
StructureThere is a specific structure that each business report must follow in order to achieve a band 6. Firstly, subheadings are extremely important throughout the report – without subheadings your work will be considered an ‘essay’ rather than a ‘ business report’. The structure of a business report entails:
• Start with the Executive Summary – an introduction into the business, the issues the business is facing, and how you as the business consultant aim to turn the business around and try and achieve its goals based on what the questions asks. Provide a quick summary as to what the business report will talk about.
• Each subsequent subheading should be about each point that you must talk about e.g. for the above example, you would have the following subheadings: “Sources of finance”, “Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing” and “Global factors In Outsourcing” – DO NOT HESITATE TO USE MORE THAN 1 PARAGRAPH UNDER A SUBHEADING
• End with the subheading “Recommendations” – similar to a conclusion, however you make final recommendations to the business e.g. (above example), “…thus the business should use debt financing including debentures and unsecured notes. Furthermore the company should use outsourcing since the advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages in this situations, etc.”
Case StudiesCase studies should be incorporated throughout your report, and should account for at least 50% of your work. The case study that is provided in the question should obviously be the focus of the business report, however you should not hesitate to use other companies as examples to prove your point. This is indefinitely important in business studies reports however extremely vital in business studies essays (where there is no given business case). You should aim to explain the syllabus content in each paragraph, and follow it up by making recommendations and explaining how the business in the scenario should implement the strategy you have proposed. When explaining the content through the case study itself, you should:
1. Explain how the company would implement your proposed strategy in that paragraph
2. Explain how this would affect the business – especially through statistics
Understand the markers perspectiveA HSC marker is constantly going through papers and essay each and every day – they have to mark hundreds of papers each. You must understand that a marker will not spend more than 5 minutes reading your essay – probably not even more than 2 minutes. Therefore, you must ensure that you use BUSINESS TERMINOLOGY and CASE STUDIES frequently throughout your essay. That is exactly what the marker will be looking for and so using it constantly will be beneficial to your mark, helping you achieve a band 6.
All these combined, along with detailed knowledge of the content and case studies will help you achieve the highest range of marks for this business report. If at any point you need some extra detail or explanation, there are awesome notes available here. And of course, if anything is unclear, pop a question below! Either myself or one of your fellow HSC-ers will be sure to help you out.
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