Students who have spent most of their
undergraduate careers solving problems and tackling exercises are likely to
need specific help in constructing a coherent argument through continuous prose
and appropriate structuring of material. Furthermore, the Economics Assignment
will require them to move beyond the descriptive to analysis and evaluation.
These are also key skills that may only be developed through the Economics
Assignment in many Economics Assignment undergraduate programmers.
Students need further guidance to keep
an appropriate balance between the key components. The temptation is to use up
too many words in the early sections in introducing the topic and describing
the background. This is especially tempting in relation to some projects. For
example, a student investigating a question in the context of a particular
country may begin by describing the Economics Assignment conditions of that
country, so that the report comes to resemble something more appropriate for
economic history or geography than Economics Assignment. On the other hand,
there may be a temptation to take some of the Economics Assignment analysis for
granted, thus missing the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and
understanding of Economics Assignment analysis and thereby showcasing their
skills to the examiner. This question of knowing what to include and what to
omit is a tricky one, and an area in which supervisors will need to be ready to
offer guidance. Another challenge is for students to be evaluative and
analytic, going beyond description.
At the outset, students often find it
intimidating to launch themselves on writing an 8,000 or 10,000 word report. It
is important to find a way of overcoming this. One way is to encourage students
to draw up a chapter plan at an early stage. This could be based on the general
pattern set out above, with the students being asked to draft a few sentences
describing the intended content of each chapter, and a target word count. This
has the advantage of breaking the overall task into a sequence of shorter
pieces of work, which may be less intimidating. Making some examples of
previous Economics Assignments available for students to consult may also be
helpful, as they are able to see what can be achieved, as well as getting a
feel for how to structure a long report.
