Answering Paper 1-Style Questions

Your test on Tuesday will be in the style of a Paper 1 (extended response) paper. You will have a choice
of two questions. Each question has two parts, part ‘a’ and part ‘b’.

Before you answer the questions, be sure to take 5 minutes to plan your responses. Make some jot
notes on paper to guide your writing so that you will compose sensible paragraphs that address specific
points.

Answering the Questions

When answering part ‘a’, be sure to define any relevant terms and answer the question. These can be
adequately answered in less than a page. You should budget about 15 minutes to write your answer.

When answering part ‘b’, be sure to evaluate, which means to ‘judge’, often between policy choices.
You will have often to rank from best to worst or from most effective to least effective, and give reasons
to support your choice. You may need to look at impacts of different options in the short-run and the
long-run, both positive and negative, in order to judge the relative merits of different options.

At the end, though, having looked at all the angles (will it work or not, impacts in the short-term (both
positive and negative, and for whom), impacts in the long term (both positive and negative, and for
whom), you will need to come down and make a final judgment along the lines of “the best option is
to…” or “overall, the policy is a poor one as….” You are not allowed to ‘sit on the fence’ when evaluating.

Diagrams are often helpful in your explanations for part ‘a’ (and sometimes for part ‘b’) but the focus is
on answering the question in part ‘a’ and in doing a good job of evaluation in part ‘b’.

Example Question (from May 2014 P1 HL TZ2)

Microeconomics
1. (a) Analyse the private and external benefits associated with the consumption of
university education. [10 marks]

(b)Evaluate the policies a government might use to increase the consumption of

university education. [15 marks]