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Exam Technique for P5 – Which question should be answered first ?

Forums › Ask ACCA Tutor Forums › Ask the Tutor ACCA APM Exams › Exam Technique for P5 – Which question should be answered first ?

  • This topic has 3 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by Ken Garrett.
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • March 15, 2012 at 2:32 pm #51869
    rick710503
    Member
    • Topics: 3
    • Replies: 3
    • ☆

    Dear Tutor

    What is your opinion about exam technique for P5 ?. I am interested in knowing whether it would be risky to start with the 2 questions in section B and then answer question 1 and 2 ?

    What do you recommend ?. (expecting Q1 with lot of information to digest and lots of numbers!!)

    Many thanks,

    March 16, 2012 at 4:19 pm #95526
    Ken Garrett
    Keymaster
    • Topics: 10
    • Replies: 10589
    • ☆☆☆☆☆

    Well, I think that your 15 minute reading (and annotating) time is best spent on getting to grips with the longer questions. For most people it is very difficult in the middle of an exam to set aside time to study carefully a very long question. There is a danger that you start a high-mark question without having appreciated fully all its information.

    Therefore, my advice is to start with the question with the maximum marks, having digested that in the reading time.

    May 11, 2012 at 7:23 am #95527
    josephandrewdk
    Member
    • Topics: 2
    • Replies: 7
    • ☆

    so you recommend to do Section A first than section B?
    because I did all questions of section B first last time and Section A later …
    failed the paper .. I don’t think that this was the main reason for failing the paper … do you?

    May 11, 2012 at 7:20 pm #95528
    Ken Garrett
    Keymaster
    • Topics: 10
    • Replies: 10589
    • ☆☆☆☆☆

    I recommend that you start with the longer questions in Section A. The P5 examiner has made no particular comment but examiners of other papers where there is a long Q1 then shorter questions have commented that students who do not start with the long question have less chance of success.

    As to whether you starting with Section B was the main reason for you failing, I don’t know as I don’t know how well you managed to allocate your time subsequently. The main danger in postponing the long questions is that not enough time is left to study properly the immense amount of detail in those.

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