How To Study Unit 3 Effectively?

How to do well in Unit 3?

Student’s question: Unit 3 seems to be interesting. Any suggestions on how to make the learning more effective?

Right question at the right time. If you were to ask me how to make learning more fun & yet effective at the same time, stick to these 2 rules:

Rule no. 1: Learn Economics through case studies
Rule no. 2: Never forget rule no. 1

But even if we read case studies, there are few principles for students to uphold

Step 1: Make sure you understand all essential macroeconomic terms or definitions

There are several Macroeconomic jargons that you can often see in newspaper, magazine, internet etc. So, before you read those case studies, please make sure you got them all at your finger tips. They are like:

(a) real GDP
(b) real GDP per capita
(c) economy slowing down
(d) recession
(e) inflation
(f) unemployment
(g) import & export
(h) Balance of Payments
(i) Interest rate
(j) National debt etc

Step 2: Choose reading materials that you are comfortable with

I strongly do not suggest ‘beginners’ to read up The Economist, Forbes, Fortune 500 etc. No doubt they are very informative, but more often than not they are long winded. Furthermore, they are not cheap. As an example, The Economist costs RM 18 & it is published weekly. Choose sources that are more students friendly like the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (highly recommended)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Step 3: Relate with what you have learned in the class

Read the articles analytically. Try to relate them with relevant concepts you learned in class. For example:

“In the light of creeping inflation, Bank of England decides to increase interest rates”
Ask yourself these questions as you go along:
(i) What is inflation anyway?
(ii) What will happen to an average people on the street when there is inflation?
(iii) How by raising interest rate can curb inflation?
(iv) What are the factors that Bank of England needs to consider before raising interest rate?
(v) Will it be successful? Or is it a short run effort?

Step 4: Discuss with your teacher on the articles you read

Your teacher can help you to brainstorm & arrived at various possibilities of answers to above questions. By doing this more often, in no time you will find that your reasoning & evaluation skills will improve tremendously