F8 – 2nd sitting & Self Study

@evanslawlor15 said:
Hi All,

I am planning on sitting the F8 exam for the 2nd time this March. I sat this last June and got 47% (absolute killer!, totally failed on time management and exam technique).
As this is all theory really – I’m considering just studying this myself without doing any lectures. Has anyone else done this and passed? I also work in finance and am involved in our annual audit so I really don’t see why I shouldn’t.
Also, on another note – I still have all my BPP books from last year – I’m assuming i can still use these for the Mar 18 exam, don’t think anything really has changed. Very hard finding info on the ACCA site about this. Thanks a lot.

Hi Erin,
I self studied this module when I did F8 and I didn’t really use lectures. As you have done it before this is what I would recommend:

This is the advice I would give:
As you were close to the 50 mark pass boundary, I believe you knew most of the syllabus and therefore it is more your technique that may have gone wrong.

Did you talk about business risks rather than audit risks for example?
Also, I was told that as well as doing past paper practice, try to avoid using generic terms like check and instead use terms like agree/cast etc… (check could lead to 0/0.5 marks instead of 1+ mark as it is too generic.

This was very useful to me as it it pointed out the common errors students make, https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/acca/global/PDF-students/2012/sa_oct08_lewin.pdf

Other advice I have seen:

1) Do pass papers… if you get some questions wrong, dont worry about it, move on to the next pass paper or practice test. There’s no point wasting time going over and over the same question because another paper will tackle the same question worded differently.

2) Make sure you learn key words and phrases… like “Substantive”, use words like “Agree the balance against… “instead of “Check”.

3) Be methodical in your answers, Give your answer and explain why your answer is right, and what the response should be, even if you think your answer may be wrong, or you do not even know the answer.. you should still write something. never leave a question unanswered.

Here is the syllabus for f8:
https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/acca/global/PDF-students/acca/f8/studyguides/f8-sg-sept17-jun18.pdf

I have looked at the amendments and this is the only ones from the 2016/17 so the BPP book will be fine:
B3ba) Outcome verbs amended to better reflect the level of knowledge required and exam requirement wording
B3b)Describe the audit risks in the financial statements and explain the auditor’s response to each risk.[2]
E5) Section wording changed to refer to Independent Auditor’s Report
E5. Independent Auditor’s report

This seems very minor tbh, so that prior book will be more than sufficient and I would concentrate on the exam kit anyway.

I hope this helps and good luck on F8 and your further ACCA journey.

Many Regards,
Samir

@evanslawlor15 said:
Hi Samir,

Thanks so much for the very detailed and helpful response. Pretty sure it was definitely my technique that let me down in the end, plus I did the CBE for this in June and I don’t think I practiced that enough before the exam day. Hopefully 2nd time round i’ll have more luck. 🙂 Thanks again

No problem, good luck to you and if you have any other question please ask.
I also agree I much prefer the written exams over CBE tbh, just find it less fiddly. Try and get more practice I would recommend as your base knowledge will be in place and you could probably just overview the syllabus in this attempt.
Good luck Erin and all the best.

I’m still beating myself up over my mark of 47%, I sat the paper-based exam in December. My time management was poor and I was also unable to answer some of the part B questions as I had no knowledge of what the some of the terms meant (hot and cold reviews). In total I only attempted 66 marks out of 100 which is poor, but hopefully next time I’ll manage my time better.

I knew as soon as I finished the exam and checked the https://opentuition.com/topic/acca-f8-december-2017-exam-instant-poll-comments/ webpage I knew I made some stupid mistakes on some of the multiple choice questions, which could have helped me scrape a pass.

I’ll think I’ll enjoy the CBE exam in March more (I wanted to do CBE in December but my centre didn’t provide the option) as I a wordy exam like this will be easier to perform and presentation marks will be easier to achieve.