How to Teach Clear & Concise Analysis

How to Teach

Clear & Concise Analysis

September 19th, 2025

This week I want to zoom in on one of the Five Essential Skills that I believe makes or breaks a student’s success in IB Economics: writing the analysis.

First of all, I want to say thank you to Bill Blaine from Westwood High School for reaching out and requesting this breakdown. I hope you find it helpful.

So, I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating.

Writing in IB Economics is not like writing in history or literature.

It’s technical writing.

It’s trained, structured, and practiced. In many ways, it is more similar to writing a lab report in Biology than it is to writing an essay in social studies.

And that means we, as teachers, need to give our students very clear, very repeatable structures that they can rely on when the pressure of the IB exams is sitting on their shoulders.

Why Analysis Matters

The analysis is where students show that they can take the economic theory we’ve taught them and apply it to a specific situation. It is where they move beyond just drawing a diagram and into explaining what is happening, why it matters, and how it connects to policy decisions.

And this is where two other skills come together: The Language and The Diagrams.

If students have mastered their vocabulary and can draw and label diagrams with confidence, then writing the analysis is simply a matter of explaining those diagrams with the right words in the right order.

That’s it. That’s the magic of analysis.

The Basic Structure

I teach my students a simple structure.

Describe the base diagram. What is the starting point? Make sure they identify the axes, the equilibrium, the key terms.

Introduce the event. What policy or change is being applied? A tax, a subsidy, a shift in demand, a shift in supply.

Explain the impact. Which curve shifted, why did it shift, and what happened to equilibrium price and quantity?

Link to theory. Use the vocabulary precisely and connect the movement in the diagram to the relevant concept in the syllabus.

That’s it. Four steps.

Here is a downloadable version of my Analysis structure for Paper 1 and Paper 2.

When students follow this structure, their analysis paragraphs become focused, concise, and technical. They stop wandering, they stop guessing, and they start sounding like economists.

A Simple Example

Let’s say the government introduces an indirect tax on sugary drinks.

Step 1: The base diagram is a standard basse diagram for demand and supply showing the market for sugary drinks.

Step 2: The event is the tax. The supply curve shifts inward.

Step 3: As a result, the equilibrium price rises, and the equilibrium quantity falls. The difference between the two supply curves shows the size of the tax.

Step 4: The tax leads to a reduction in the quantity consumed of sugary drinks, which addresses the negative externality of overconsumption.

That is a clean, technical analysis paragraph.

It is not fancy. It does not need to be. But it is exactly what examiners are looking for.

Practice and Practice

One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my teaching career was thinking that analysis should be taught as a separate moment, once students had all the content.

That was silly and wrong.

Analysis needs to be practiced every single day, week, unit, verbally, in written form, always.

Just like language quizzes and diagram drills, analysis writing must be part of your routine. Give students small prompts, ask them to write one clean paragraph, and then go through it together. Over time, those paragraphs become second nature.

I often tell my students this: If you can describe the diagram and explain the event, you already have an analysis paragraph written. And that is incredibly empowering for them.

Building Confidence

When students sit for the IB Exam, confidence is everything.

The ones who know they can sit down and write a clear analysis paragraph without hesitation are the ones who keep calm and focused.

And here’s the best part.

Once students master the structure of analysis, they are halfway to mastering evaluation. Because evaluation is just analysis taken one step further—looking at the strengths, weaknesses, and alternatives. But it all begins with the analysis.

So as you begin school year, keep this in mind.

Every lesson should touch one of the Five Essential Skills, but make sure analysis has a special place. Make it routine. Make it structured. Make it simple.

In case it’s helpful, here is a downloadable version of my Analysis structure for Paper 1 and Paper 2.

Be good out there.

See you next week.

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