IB Economics.

The maximum word count for each commentary is 800 words. It is vitally important to write as close as possible up to this limit i.e. 799 words! In order to maximize your marks, you will have to do a lot of things – write an introduction and conclusion, draw one or two diagrams, explain and describe each one, define some economic terms and concepts that you are using, directly refer to the article etc. All of this takes up a lot of your word count! For this reason, make sure you use as much of your word count as possible.

I give my students the following diagram to help them:-

In this case the commentary is two pages long and is made up of 8 paragraphs of writing. It includes 2 diagrams and each diagram is explained and described underneath. There is an introductory and concluding paragraph. (You don’t need to give them these subtitles, bye-the-way. Indeed, your commentary should not include any subtitles. It should just be composed of  series of paragraphs, like a mini-essay).