BGCSE Commerce Coursework – Start to Finish
By: Mrs. M. Fowler
(Mrs. Fowler has over 15 years experience teaching Commerce in the Bahamas. She has also served as a marker as well as writer for the national exam: BGCSE)
Step 1: Choose a topic: - topic should be related to Commerce
Step 2: Write at least 3 aims. (aims will point out what information you intend to include in the coursework.)
Step 3: Write an outline or table of contents (each of your aims will be the title of each chapter) – outline will look similar to the following:
Introduction
Chapter 1 – chapter title (aim #1)
Chapter 2 – chapter title (aim #2)
Chapter 3 – chapter title (aim #3)
Conclusion
Bibliography (see specified format)
Appendix (sample questionnaires/interview questions – letter requesting interview etc)
Step 4: Write your introduction – The first paragraph should be some general information or commentary about your topic – the second paragraph should be your aims:- In this coursework I aim to… (state your aims in full sentences. – The third paragraph should be your methodology – how you will go about getting information for your coursework – (remember: coursework should be primary research so you must either do an interview or a questionnaire or both along with your library research.
Step 5: Write your questionnaire/interview questions – look at each aim and ask questions to help you find information for your aims. You may have to ask a few questions for each of the aims.
Step 6: Conduct a book research about your topic so that when you conduct the interview you will have some background information about your topic and can ask intelligent questions. You may be able to update your questionnaire/interview questions after you read up on your topic.
Step 7: Conduct your interview or administer your questionnaires. Interviews give you an added advantage of asking follow up questions if an answer is not clear. Questionnaires may be left an collected later which could be an advantage.
Step 8a: Write Chapter 1 – Look at the topic for your chapter one and the aim you may want to turn the aim into a question and answer it or simply write all of the information you collected from books and interviews/questionnaires based on this aim.
Step 8b: At the end of chapter 1 – put a sub heading: Chapter Analysis and write a chapter analysis giving your input into what you found out. Some helpful statements for your chapter analysis are:
In this chapter I targeted aim # 1 which was….
This chapter discussed…
I found out that …..
It was interesting to note that …
It is common knowledge that …
I was surprised to find out that …
It seems that ….
It was obvious that …
From the information gathered from… it is evident that …
I have taken the information collected and presented in the following bar graph. As you can see…
Of the many advantages discovered, I believe that the one that assists Commerce most is…. Because….
From the data collected I understand that …
The fact that … indicates to me that …
Step 9a: Write Chapter 2 – Look at the topic for your chapter one and the aim you may want to turn the aim into a question and answer it or simply write all of the information you collected from books and interviews/questionnaires based on this aim.
Step 9b: At the end of chapter 2 – put a sub heading: Chapter Analysis and write a chapter analysis giving your input into what you found out in this chapter. See helpful statements for your chapter analysis above. Your charts and graphs and pictures may be placed in the chapter analysis. Be sure to thoroughly explain graphs and pictures.
Step 10a: Write Chapter 3 – Look at the topic for your chapter one and the aim you may want to turn the aim into a question and answer it or simply write all of the information you collected from books and interviews/questionnaires based on this aim.
Step 10b: At the end of chapter 3 – put a sub heading: Chapter Analysis and write a chapter analysis giving your input into what you found out in this chapter. See helpful statements for your chapter analysis above.
Step 11: Write Conclusion – Write each aim and a summary of what you learnt for each aim (ie in each chapter). Write your decision statement about the coursework. Write what you learnt and what you recommend.
This coursework was an investigation to determine the services provided by Bahamas Telecommunications Company.
Aim 1 sought to give background information about BTC. BTC was established in ________ and throughout the years has grown into a Billion Dollar company…
Chapter 2 aimed to give information on the services offered by BTC. It was discovered that BTC offered a wide range of services to consumers and Business. These services include _______ …
The goal of Aim 3 was to provide information on the prices of the services offered by BTC . Prices ranged from .15 for cellphone calls to $100 for ___.
I learnt that _____________
I recommend that __________________.
Step 12: Write your Bibliography – there is a specific format for bibliographies – use the format provided by your teacher.
Step 13: Compile your Appendix – include sample questionnaires/interview questions, pictures, pamphlets, newspaper articles etc.
Step 14: Cover Page – Topic, Subject, school & school #, your name and candidate #, see example
