For most Chinese high school juniors, economics is fresh and mysterious, because they’ve never learned any related course during the compulsory education period. Actually, economics is the study of how people choose to use limited resources to satisfy their wants. To me, it is an interesting and practical subject, because it involves so many ideas and methods that could help us understand our daily lives in an economic way.

From my experience of teaching, Chinese students are mostly frustrated by the abstract economic concepts and complicated models in their study. In order to help them learn this subject better, here’re some suggestions.

First and foremost, students need to be motivated. A teacher’s job is not just to impart knowledge, but also to motivate the student’s interest in learning. In order to do this, I excerpt various small paragraphs fromThe Economist, based on which I design questions related to the knowledge we’re learning. For example, when it comes to supply and demand model, the students often get confused with the factors influencing the two market forces -- demand and supply. In order to make them understand the factors better, I give the students an article on the diamond market in England and ask them to find out how the price of diamond fluctuates over time and what factors account for this fluctuation. Some students give me answers based on their personal experience and others give their opinions according to the news they’ve heard. Whenever they express their own point of view, I praise them and encourage them to think more deeply. And through this active discussion, they seem to understand this complicated economic model more and also inspire the desire to learn the course better.

Much of the success in learning economics involves researching. So, as an educator, I instruct the students to survey online resources and seek their answers based on their own study. For example, when we’re talking about fiscal policy, I divide the students into four groups and ask each group to give a presentation on what is going on with the U.S. budget deficit and how the federal government deals with the huge public debt. Initially, they have no idea of what the institutions are and what the complicated terminologies mean in the online articles they read, and they turn to me or Google for help. And when they finish the presentation, they acquire enormous amount of professional knowledge and also cultivate the habit of self-study.

Jennifer Gwan