A State Ranker’s Guide To The Business Studies Short Answers Section
If you hate writing more than a page’s worth for any question and you do Business Studies, you might just be in luck! 40% of the marks in the Business Studies final exam are in the short answer/response section- Section II. This means that whether or not you like it or not, you need to know how to smash out great short responses. That’s exactly what I’m going to talk about in this article.
Post written by Tanmayi Kundap (12th in the state Business Studies 2015). See all articles first and personally get in touch with our state rankers here
Answer the question
My first and most important tip for short answer responses is to answer the question.
As opposed to the long responses, Section II is quite narrowly scoped as there isn’t a great deal of flexibility you can have in what you write.
This is because the questions are derived from or often paraphrase the syllabus dot points and hence you need to answer what is in the syllabus dot points.
This means that there is no room to off on a tangent- direct your response to the question and question only.
For example, the 2016 HSC question 24 (a) asks to:
“Discuss ONE possible method of inventory management for this business”.
This is explicitly asking you to know and write about the syllabus dot point:
“inventory management — advantages and disadvantages of holding stock, LIFO (last-in-first-out), FIFO (first-in-first-out), JIT (just-in-time)”.
There are only 2 possible answers for this question which could get you the marks- you either talk about LIFO or FIFO as JIT is not a method of inventory management but rather a way of managing flow and supply of stock.
Hence, as you can tell from the above example, it’s important you know not only what the question is, but which part of the syllabus it is coming from. The syllabus is the basis of your exam and so it’s crucial that you are aware of the contents and terminology used in the syllabus so you can give the markers exactly what they are looking for.
Understanding the question
More often than not, I’ve felt the need to write more to answer a question.
However after writing a half a page answer for a question which only needed a one line response, I realised the importance of understanding the question.
This is different to answering the question as it’s the first step to succeeding in short answer responses. It happens before you even put your pen to paper.
The first thing to look at when you see the question is the command/directive words or terms.
These are the first words of a question- they tell you what the question is asking and basically indicate what and how much you need to write. Below are common directive terms and what you need to do if you see it:
Identify
To answer ‘identify’ questions, you simply need to recognise the name the relevant terms. This means a one or two word response is enough to get you the marks
Get Alex Luo’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
For example:
Identify two key performance indicators that are used in HR.
Answer: Turnover rate and absenteeism
Describe
To answer ‘describe’ questions, you need to provide characteristics and features of the terms/concepts.
For example:
Q22 (2015 HSC): Describe ONE common law obligation of an employee
Answer: (from 2015 HSC Marking Guidelines): “One common law obligation is to obey lawful and reasonable commands made by the employer. Reasonable orders are those that do not expose employees to physical danger or contravene awards or existing laws.”
Explain
To answer ‘explain’ questions, you need to give a detailed explanation either by relating cause and effect, making relationship between things evident or saying why or how things are.
For example:
Q23 (2016 HSC): Heather outsources the cleaning of her Sydney office. Explain ONE advantage of this strategy.
Answer: An advantage of outsourcing is that it can allow Heather to reduce her business costs relating to cleaning. As a key performance objective of Operations is cost, this reduced business cost for Heather will mean that she can redirect the resources to developing her key business competencies which can give her business greater efficiency.
Analyse
To answer ‘analyse’ questions, you need to discuss the implications/relationships of the terms- looking at positives/advantages/benefits and negatives/disadvantages/costs of each
For example:
(Adapted from 2015 HSC Q25b): Analyse the interdependence between human resources management and profitability management.
Answer: The human resources (HR) and financial management functions are interdependent in a business as HR is a cost centre and Finance is a revenue centre. For this reason, a business can improve on its profitability (part of its financial management function) via reducing HR costs; incurred through activities such as staff training, wages, bonuses and compensation. A common practice in reducing HR costs is to reduce training costs per employees which enables greater profitability management as total business costs are reduced. However, reduced HR management costs may negatively impact profitability in the long term. For example, reducing wages may lead to a lack of morale for employees which can increase overall HR costs as absenteeism and turnover rates may increase. Similarly, reduced costs in training may increase the risk of accident occurring as well as lowered productivity and efficiency. Hence, profitability would be reduced as greater expenditure on activities such as insurance premiums, compensation and staff replacements may be needed.
With those being the most common directive terms, now comes the important part; practicing.
It’s crucial that you know how to answer each type of short-answer question- particularly difficult ones in which you may need to use data or mini-stimuli provided from the question.
Practicing short responses can also help to revise your content better so I highly recommend you do so.
If you still feel stuck and don’t know how much to write for a question, a quick look at the number of lines provided gives a reasonable indication of this.
My personal advice would be to practice your sample responses in that very number of lines- the HSC Gods have provided the lines because they believe (for people with average-sized writing) it is possible to get the full allocated marks in that allocated space.
This has also allowed me to make my answers succinct and direct- which is how you are should write for short responses.
Post written by Tanmayi Kundap (12th in the state Business Studies 2015)
To get in touch with our talented state rankers and access all articles first, just join our community by clicking the picture below:
