Forums › Ask ACCA Tutor Forums › Ask the Tutor ACCA AAA Exams › dept of answer
- This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated 6 years ago by MikeLittle.
- AuthorPosts
- May 18, 2018 at 1:03 am #452593
hi, mike,
I have one question if you can kindly answer that in full, please.
when I looked at past questions and answers of p7, even if I possess the required knowledge to answer most of it but then it won’t be possible to write all of it in three hours and 15 minutes.
if you can refer to question no;1 S/D 2015 Dali, it asked the evaluation of audit risks, and when I recognize an issue and how should I go for it? because if I start by writing what is the IAS- say about the treatment of that particular risk (e.g inventory valuation) whether that is material or immaterial then identify the risk and highlight the issue in the scenario and think its impact on financial statements.
by doing all that, it takes time, how to cope with it?, can you mike please write any model answer to Question 1 of any past paperMay 18, 2018 at 7:29 am #452636Briefly … no!
However, I can give you some guidance but first some reassurance
Those printed solutions are not, and never have been, intended to be model solutions. They are written at great length as a comprehensive answer for the benefit of students – ie they are there for students’ benefit and education
They include every conceivable relevant comment concerning the question and are much, much longer than even the best prepared student could hope to achieve. These answers are not written within the appropriate time allocation – you couldn’t COPY them in the appropriate time allocation!
They are written by subject specialists (or the examiner) having available open books, ISAs, IFRSs, study texts …
Each answer is written by one specialist after consultation with his / her peers with ideas being bounced around the group until they are happy that every conceivable relevant point will be included
So just because your efforts fail to surpass even half of the printed answer is NOT a cause for concern
OK on this?
Now, the guidance
Look at the number of marks available in a question or part question
Divide that number by 2 and that equals the number of minutes that you should spend reading (the question), thinking (about the issues involved) and planning (sufficient points to achieve a passing mark when those points are written into an answer)
Say the question was worth 20 marks. That’s a time allocation of 39 minutes
10 minutes out of that 39 is reading, thinking and planning
That leaves just 29 minutes to write out 20 points and that represents just 1.45 minutes (1 minute and 27 seconds to write a sentence containing just 1 relevant, markable, valid point
Now the key point … do you know how much you can write in 1 minute 27 seconds? Because that’s the MAXIMUM length of any single sentence in your exam answer and that single sentence contains ONE markable point
One sentence, one mark. One mark, one sentence
And one sentence, one paragraph
Forget ISA titles and numbers. Forget IFRS titles and numbers. They score no marks and represent a fruitless waste of time and effort
Go on – see how much you can copy from an answer and time yourself for 1 minute 27 seconds … better still, get someone else with a stopwatch to time you saying ‘start’ and ‘stop’ appropriately
You will probably find that you don’t reach the fourth line on a page of A4 paper (normal size hand-writing and, crucially, legible hand-writing)
OK?
- AuthorPosts
- The topic ‘dept of answer’ is closed to new replies.