Spice up GCSE Edexcel Business answers with some ‘such as seasoning’ for context

Back in November I blogged about an activity I had used to develop the use of connectives in Year 10 students as part of a programme of 'Written Exam Skill of the Term' activities. It's worked really well and this term we are developing 'context' as the skill of the term to add to the confidence of students in using connectives. Here is some advice on context in Edexcel GCSE Business and an activity that can be used to help students develop this skill.

Context is a vital skill in Unit 3 Building a Business for Edexcel GCSE Business. After Question 1 b,c & d, every question worth 3 marks or more requires the answer to be linked to the business in question, using real-life knowledge of that business or reference to details provided in the case study.

Crucially, the rule of thumb for examiners is that if the word/phrase doesn't appear in the question itself and relates the answer to that type of business context marks can be awarded.

In the course of the Unit 3 paper, there are around nine 3 or 4 mark questions alone. If a student doesn't get context in these answers they can be theoretically accurate and have excellent chains of argument full of connectives but still give away 9 marks which will probably cost them a grade. Context is also assessed in the longer 6, 8 and 10 mark questions too.

So to help my students, I've developed a simple technique called 'such as seasoning' in which they use the phrase 'such as...' to make reference to a real world example for the business they are discussing. Take a question from last year as an example of how this works:

4 (c) Explain one benefit to The Lego Group of selling a quality product (3 mks)

One benefit of selling a quality product would be that Lego's customers would be very pleased and satisfied with the products. As a result they would recommend the products to their friends and family who would also buy them. This would lead to Lego achieving greater sales and a larger market share than rivals such as Mega Bloks or COBI.

This answer would achieve 2 marks only without the bold italic part at the end, which provides the context for the third mark. Both of these rival companies are specifically mentioned in the case study.

To help my students practice this technique, I developed this lesson in which they give real-life examples of business concepts for a variety of industries. For example they must think of variable costs or competitors for a garage, a fast food restaurant, or hairdresser. They then can choose a question to answer and choose which industry to apply it to. Once they have done that they swap with a partner and the assess each others work using the checklist. The acid test is this; can the students guess which type of business their partner is talking about in the answer (from more than just the name of the business)? If so there is probably context present. The attached file has two versions, one for students in Year 10 who may have only covered Unit 1 material so far and one for students in Year 11 who have covered some Unit 3 material.

I hope colleagues find it useful.