How to make sure that you pass the June 2016 Paper F5 exam!

By now, you should have studied all the topics using either our free lectures or a Study Text, and no doubt you will have been practicing lots of questions – either from past exams on the ACCA website, or (better) from your Revision Kit.

Here are a few tips on how to maximise your chances of success in the exam itself:

The 15 minutes reading time:

Use it to look at the questions in Section B. Just look at the requirements – that will tell you what the topics being examined are and help you to decide in which order to attempt the questions. Often the requirements ask for more than one thing – for example it might ask you to ‘calculate and explain’ something. Underline the words ‘calculate’ and ‘explain’ so that later you do not forget to answer both bits of the question.

When you have done that, then start on Section A. Although you cannot write in the answer book during the 15 minutes, you can write on the exam paper, so start working through the questions.

Section A – the multiple choice questions:

Your aim has to be to make sure you get at least 50% of the marks.
Work through the questions in order, but as soon as you come to one that needs a lot of reading or is on something you are not happy about – leave it. You can come back to it later if you have time.

Answer the shorter questions and the questions on topics that you are confident about first – again, you can come back later to the longer and harder questions if you have time.
If you come to a question about which you have no idea at all (especially one that does not involve calculations) then there is no point in wasting any time. Guess an answer! You might guess correctly and get the marks – if you guess incorrectly then you don’t get negative marks, just zero.

Don’t waste time doing ‘pretty’ workings. You will obviously need to do workings to be able to answer the calculation questions, but nobody will look at your workings for Section A, so do not waste time setting your workings out neatly.

Make sure, if you attempt Section A first, that you do not spend longer than 72 minutes. If you spend longer than you will not have time to complete Section B. Remember you can always come back to Section A later if you do find that you have time left at the end.

Section B – the long-form questions

Here, the marks are more for your workings than for the final answer. Even if you make a mistake and get the wrong final answer then you will still get most of the marks if you were attempting to do it the right way. So make sure that your workings are neat and easy for the marker to follow.

Make sure that you do something for every part of every question in Section B. There are bound to be some parts of some questions where you get stuck and don’t know what to do. But always do something, however little. Even if what you do only get 1 mark, then if it turns your overall mark of 49 into 50, then it will make you pass.
This especially applies to any writing parts of questions. Most students do not like writing, but just making one point is likely to get you a mark, and that one mark might make all the difference.

Sometimes, part (b) of a question asks you to comment on figures that you have calculated in part (a) of the question. However, even if you have got the wrong answer to part (a) you can still get all the marks for part (b) if you make sensible comments on the figure that you got in part (a). If you couldn’t get an answer for paper (a) then invent an answer when you come to part (b) and sensible comments on it will still get the marks.

When the time for the exam is nearly up, then go back to Section A and make sure that you have given an answer for every question – even if it means guessing for several of them. If you have 4 questions unanswered, then the chances are that out of 4 guesses then at least 1 will be right, and that is 2 marks! 2 marks on its own is not much, but if it turns at overall mark of 49% into 51% then it is everything 🙂

Make sure that you use a black ballpoint pen for everything. Pencil or other colours will not be marked. Take spare pens with you to the exam 🙂