Studying HSC Business Studies and have no clue where to begin when it comes to the essay you’ll need to write for the final exam?
No worries! I’ve used my trusty guide to help hundreds of students at NSW’s top-performing schools secure that Band 6 Essay, and now I’m here to make sure YOU can do the same!
This guide, packed with my best tips and tricks, is your one-stop shop for mastering this writing style you might not be as familiar with — so you can nail that Business Studies essay with confidence 💪
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
What Does the HSC Business Studies Essay Involve?
Step 1: Decide on Your Approach
Step 2: Plan Your Essay
Writing a Band 6 Thesis
Step 3: Finish Your Introduction Strong
Step 4: Choose Your Case Studies
Step 5: Write the Essay
Step 6: Practise Writing HSC Business Studies Essay Plans
What Does the HSC Business Studies Essay Involve?
The HSC Business Studies Essay makes up 20 marks of Section IV in the HSC exam.
It is also often known as the ‘Case Study’ essay because students are expected to integrate case studies or real-life business examples into their responses.
The general marking criteria for a Band 6 in the HSC Business Studies Essay is that a student:
- Applies relevant case study/studies and contemporary business issues
- Presents a sustained, logical and cohesive response and communicates clearly using relevant business terminology and concepts
As usual, they are based on the guidelines and comments from HSC markers: the ones who mark hundreds of essays year in and year out.
Example Question
Here is the example question we’re going to use throughout this article to demonstrate what to do to get that Band 6 in your HSC Business Studies Essay:
Overview
And, before we get into it, here is an overview of the step-by-step structure we’re going to follow:
Step #1: Decide on Your Approach
The 30-70 Rule
As mentioned above, there are two ways to approach a HSC Business Studies essay:
- 70% case studies and 30% theory explanation
- 70% theory explanation 30% case studies
It’s important to understand that either approach, if executed well, is FINE.
The 30-70 Rule: all essays had either 30% theory and 70% case study or vice versa.
From my experience looking at many top-scoring HSC Business Studies essay responses over multiple years, all of them followed the 30-70 Rule.
Provided you follow the 30-70 Rule, pick the approach you find most logical and you are most comfortable writing with and you are well on your way to crafting that Band 6 HSC Business Studies essay!
Note: Students often stress too much about the structure or approach of your essays. While structure is important, don’t forget to provide well explained and supported arguments that answer the question.
Which Approach Should You Take?
There are essentially two schools of thought when it comes to writing a Band 6 HSC Business Studies essay.
Some teachers and markers believe that the case study should be the driving factor in your essay, adding theory to explain the case where needed. On the other hand, some believe that the case study should only be used as evidence to highlight or accentuate your theory and explanation.
For your school assessments, it’s best to follow your marker’s preferred school of thought. However, for the HSC exam, choose whichever approach suits you the best!
This is a similar approach to using statistics in an Economics essay, which if you also study, you can check out a similar guide to writing a Band 6 Economics essay!
Step #2: Plan Your Essay
As you probably have experienced, the HSC Business Studies syllabus encompasses a large variety of dot points you will be expected to recall.
#1: Write Down All Relevant Syllabus Dot Points
To make sure that this doesn’t trip you over, I recommend using the first page of your writing booklet to sketch a plan of your response. Importantly, this should include the syllabus dot points you will be referring to.
Jotting these down on the page ensured that I first of all didn’t forget any, but secondly, it also gave me an opportunity to draw connections between different syllabus dot points to better answer the question!
If you are finding it hard to memorise the syllabus content, check out memorisation tips for Business Studies!
#2: Use the Directive Verb to Create Your Thesis
Before we plan, we must understand the NESA directive verbs. This will determine the level of depth and how the markers want you to answer the question.
With a plan, it makes your essay structure clearer and allows you to organise your ideas in a way that keeps your response sustained, which is a key component of the A range marking criteria.
Your essay must continually drive towards developing your thesis.
Coming from an experienced marker, this is the most important thing about any essay because it is the answer to the essay question itself.
All paragraphs, business theory and case studies are simply used to support the thesis.
How to Write a Band 6 Thesis for Your HSC Business Studies Essay
The most important thing about any essay is the answer to the question itself with your thesis. All paragraphs, business theory and case studies are simply used to support the thesis.
As a result, begin the plan by writing a direct answer to the question. In your thesis you want to:
- Provide context for the question — including definitions of key terms such as external influences and operations management
- Then use qualifiers or intensifiers (to some extent, significantly, is ineffective) to answer the essay question.
For our example, the thesis for our example questions would look like this:
Operations management involves the set of processes used by businesses to transform inputs into outputs. These processes are continually influenced by external influences which can significantly hinder or promote a business’ competitive advantage. Operations management therefore must respond to these external influences using its operations strategies to capitalise on new developments and adapt, hence highlighting the importance of responding to external influences.
#3: Organise your Body Paragraph Ideas into Dot Points
Now you should organise your ideas into dot points which you will write your paragraphs about.
Also, note down any sub-points or arguments you think of underneath. This can include theory or case study events.
As this is the planning stage, it isn’t essential to get it all down perfectly — even just a word or key term to retain your train of thought is fine.
Below is an IDEAL plan using our example question. I’ve used more words than I normally would to help you read along (in reality, a few word dot points are fine, as long as you can understand what you’ve written).
If there are natural links and connections between paragraphs this can also be useful in transitioning in between different paragraphs to maintain the cohesiveness of the essay, i.e. making it flow better.
Step #3: Write A Strong Introduction
A strong introduction includes a strong thesis that provides context for the essay.
Now, connect your paragraph points to answering the thesis and introduce your case studies. This is better than simply stating which external influences you will be looking at, which is not as effective and thesis-driven.
For example, rather than saying:
Globalisation, quality expectations and corporate social responsibility are the external influences which operations management must respond to. These influences are best represented by leading pizza franchise Domino’s Pizza, local school textbook manufacturer Secondary Textbooks, and leading sportswear and footwear manufacturer Nike.
Try this:
These influences are exemplified by globalisation, which has opened businesses to the influence of global factors and increasingly demanding supply chain management needs, increased quality expectations that have created more stringent quality processes and management strategies, and an emerging emphasis on corporate social responsible behaviours to ensure legal compliance and ethical responsibility. Leading pizza franchise Domino’s Pizza, local school textbook manufacturer Secondary Textbooks, and leading sportswear and footwear manufacturer Nike are businesses that respectively demonstrate the crucial response of operations management.
It is much more impressive to the marker if you can show a direct link between your points and the thesis you are addressing, as it shows a more logical and well-planned response.
Together the intro would look like this:
Operations management involves the set of processes used by businesses to transform inputs into outputs. These processes are continually influenced by external influences which can significantly hinder or promote a business’ competitive advantage. Operations management therefore must respond to these external influences using its operations strategies to capitalise on new developments and adapt, hence highlighting the importance of responding to external influences.
These influences are exemplified by globalisation, which has opened businesses to the influence of global factors and increasingly demanding supply chain management needs, increased quality expectations that have created more stringent quality processes and management strategies, and an emerging emphasis on corporate social responsible behaviours to ensure legal compliance and ethical responsibility. Leading pizza franchise Domino’s Pizza, local school textbook manufacturer Secondary Textbooks, and leading sportswear and footwear manufacturer Nike are businesses that respectively demonstrate the crucial response of operations management.
Step #4: Choose Your Business Studies Case Studies
In addition to choosing how much of the essay to focus on case studies, you will also need to decide which case studies (and how many) to use in your HSC Business Studies essay. Again, it varies and depends on what you are comfortable with.
However, from marking thousands of Business Studies Essays, I’ve found the top responses have followed these trends:
- Use more than one case study (usually three in total, or one per body paragraph)
- Typically been large real-life businesses where there is a wide range of information available.
- Use the most recent events and issues
- Have not used hypothetical
Think about it this way — would you trust someone if they said that a certain business strategy has worked if it hasn’t actually happened in real life?
Should You Use Hypothetical Case Studies in Your Business Studies Essay?
This isn’t saying to stay away from hypothetical case studies (i.e. a made-up business). It’s not impossible to get 20/20 with hypothetical case studies.
However, markers have found that hypothetical businesses are often a ‘super business’ that is perfect in every single way and therefore have no issues.
This ultimately does not give you much to write about and hence, you fail to show adequate knowledge of contemporary business issues. Which is obviously a problem for your HSC Business Studies Essay.
If you do choose to use a hypothetical (which I did in my plan), remember to make it realistic and that the whole point of the hypothetical is to show understanding, not to be a perfect business.
Tip: I recommend that you come up with the entire business as part of your exam preparation and also write out how it connects to each syllabus dot point. You can be creative, but don’t take too many liberties, it still needs to be realistic.
Step #5: Write the Essay
The other general criteria in an HSC Business Studies essay is related to the way you write and use language, including business terminology and concepts.
This of course means you must know your content well and be able to connect different parts of the syllabus together and understand their relationships.
Once you have mastered your content, the criteria then asks for a ‘sustained, logical and cohesive‘ response. To achieve this, it is best to use a clear structure (which we have planned for in Step 1) as it forces you to retain a logical and cohesive structure.
Here’s the all-you-need method on how to do it, which I teach all my students:
#1: Use DPEEL (writing structure)
To provide a basic structure, follow DPEEL which will ensure you are using business terminology and concepts consistently in your essay.
Definition: assume the marker is a layperson (has limited knowledge of the course) and ensure you are defining the business term or concept to reflect your understanding. Can be integrated into the response and does not need its own sentence.
Point: Attack the question and pinpoint what your overall answer will be, akin to a mini thesis.
Explain: Provide further details that elaborate on your point. Depending on which directive verb you are asked, this is also where you can start to show relationships (analyse), provide additional economic theories that demonstrate a cause and effect (explain) or make a judgement (assess/evaluate).
Evidence: Use your case study to illustrate how real life businesses apply the business studies content to achieve their goals rather than simply telling the reader that the business uses a specific strategy and not elaborating on how. Also be careful of simply ‘retelling the story’ of what the business does but not connecting it to your thesis!
Link: Conclude your paragraph by linking your points back to your original thesis.
#2: Use Transition Signals
The ‘sustained’ element of the marking criteria means the markers want the essay to flow uninterrupted. No additional details or sidetracks.
The best way to achieve this is through the use of transition signals.
Transition signals include words such as furthermore, hence, as a result, this leads to, but, however.
These are ‘linking’ words which along with the DPEEL structure FORCE you to stay on track and sustain your attack on the thesis, as each sentence must relate to the previous. This makes it more difficult for you to stray off-topic, allowing you to create a sustained response!
#3: Prepare a case study table for your Business Studies essay
Just like with English, Business Studies is also a subject with high demands on memory.
Not only must you remember course content, but you must also remember relevant case studies. An efficient way to facilitate this process is a simple table that allows you to organise your information.
Here’s an example of a good HSC Business Studies Case Study Table:
This will increase your mind’s ability to chunk the information without feeling overwhelmed, and it will be easier to remember!
Don’t wait until it’s too late! At Art of Smart Education our HSC Business Studies Tutors can support you with tutoring at our Hornsby, Chatswood or Hills campuses, or in your home or online across NSW!
#4: Write a Strong Conclusion
Good news — HSC Business Studies essay conclusions are quite straightforward!
They need to:
Reaffirm your position and perspectives by restating your thesis — your answer to the question.
Tie up your points and case studies and summarise how they have supported your thesis.
Make sure you don’t overdo the conclusion. 3-4 sentences are more than enough and the last thing a marker wants to see is a conclusion that has overstayed its welcome!
Step 6: Practise Writing HSC Business Studies Essay Plans
The final and most important tip is to practise this approach using different styles and topics of essay questions. It is also important that you plan the essays as you would in an exam to give you practice for planning for unseen questions.
Apply these steps to build your consistency in writing logically and systematically.
That is the only way you will improve and when you do improve, you will notice that you have become a better overall writer and this should reflect in your other subjects too. If you need more essay questions you can use past HSC exams, your textbook, or ask your teacher.
Preparing for your Visual Arts exam too? Check out our Band 6 Essay Scaffold for HSC Visual Arts!
On the hunt for other HSC Business studies resources?
Check out our other guides and articles below:
- Everything You Need To Know About HSC Business Studies
- HSC Business Studies Practice Essay Questions
- How to Write Killer Short Answer Responses for Business Studies
- How to Write a Band 6 Business Report for Business Studies
Are you looking for some extra help with your HSC Business Studies Essay writing?
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We offer tutoring and mentoring for Years K-12 in a large variety of subjects, with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or at one of our state of the art campuses in Hornsby, Chatswood or the Hills!
To find out more and get started with an inspirational tutor and mentor get in touch today!
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Terry Huang completed his Bachelor of Secondary Education with a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of New South Wales. A strong believer that lessons should be engaging, relevant, and effective, his hustle and teaching approach have led to his recognition on the UNSW Faculty of Social Sciences Dean’s List for Academic Excellence, the NSW Teachers Federation Future Teacher scholarship, and the New Colombo Plan program. Terry enjoys listening to Kanye West, learning about cryptocurrency and memorising scenes from The Office.
