In IB Economics, you have to build a portfolio of three commentaries as part of your Internal Assessment (IA). In this blog, I’ll guide you through the process of structuring an IA commentary. In a previous blog, I talked about the 12 characteristics of a good article for your commentary.
The first page of every commentary should be your cover sheet. Here is a link to a generic cover sheet which you can fill out for each commentary.
The next page or couple of pages should be screenshots of your article. Label that page with a subheading like ‘Article’ to signal to the examiner that this is your article! I always encourage my students to highlight two or three pieces of evidence from the article and label them: Quote A, Quote B, and Quote C. This makes it easier to refer back to them in the body of the commentary to use as evidence to support your evaluation and analysis. Instead of writing the entire quote and waste wordcount, you can just write “As highlighted in Quote A in the article, ……….’
The next page is the beginning of the commentary. This is how I teach my students to structure it:
- Introduction paragraph (75 words)
- Briefly introduce the article
- Define 2-3 key terms
- Key concept (25 words)
- Identify the key concept (one of the nine central concepts: scarcity, choice, change, efficiency, equity, economic well-being, sustainability, intervention, and interdependence) that will be the focus of your commentary
- Highlight the key concept in BOLD every time you use it (or a variation of the word) throughout the commentary. For example, if your key concept is ‘intervention’, then you highlight in bold letters every time you write intervention, intervenes, intervened etc…
- 1st Diagram + Analysis/Application (150 words)
- Analyze what is happening in the article using Diagram 1 (which will be drawn directly below this paragraph)
- Make sure all labels and shifts in the diagram are explained in this paragraph, for example: “As shown in Figure 1 below, when consumer confidence levels rise, there will be an increase in AD, which is represented by a shift from AD1 to AD2…”
- Link your explanation back to the key concept
- 2nd Diagram + Analysis/Application (150 words)
- Analyze and explain a possible solution or response to the issue expressed in the article using Diagram 2 (which will be drawn directly below this paragraph)
- Make sure all labels and shifts in the diagram are explained in this paragraph, for example: “As shown in Figure 2 below, when the government raises taxes and interest rates, this will decrease aggregate demand and shift the AD curve back from AD2 to AD1…”
- Link your explanation back to the key concept
- Evaluation (400 words)
- Provide your arguments and balance them with counter-arguments while referring back to the quotes/evidence you highlighted in the article, and linking back to the key concept
- Discuss pros vs cons?
- Discuss short-term effects vs long-term effects?
- Discuss assumptions behind your analysis vs limitations of those assumptions?
- Discuss what should be happening in theory vs what is happening in practice?
- Discuss the stakeholders gaining vs the stakeholders losing?
- Remember to reach a conclusion and to prioritize your arguments based on what is most relevant in the context of the article
- Provide your arguments and balance them with counter-arguments while referring back to the quotes/evidence you highlighted in the article, and linking back to the key concept
Remember to always link back to your key concept, and that the maximum word count is 800 words!
I have actually recorded a video about ‘how to structure a good commentary’ on my YouTube channel using a student exemplar. This video is available for members of my YouTube channel. The commentary used in the video embedded below is from the macroeconomics unit, but it’s the same process for all other commentaries (just different key terms and diagrams).