Forums › ACCA Forums › General ACCA Forums › Giving too many answers in a question
- This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by MikeLittle.
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- May 21, 2013 at 8:59 am #126429
How does the examiner look upon putting down too many points for an answer? For instance – I’m just doing F8 where you might be asked to list 4 ways of selecting a sample of invoices for 4 marks, if I put down say 5 methods but one of them wasn’t correct would I still get the 4 marks or would an examiner see this as “fishing” for marks and possibly knock a mark off or something?
Another F8 example (You can tell its my F8 revision day!!) would be listing ways of verifying an account balance, if I put down a few more than necessary but not all of them are right, do the wrong ones go against me or anything?May 22, 2013 at 7:22 am #126628I believe an examiner could spill his coffee right before starting reviewing your answer paper and you could loose a couple of marks ) Talking seriuosly, if it is asked to outline FOUR steps (or something), then it has to be four steps. If there are no specific requirements about the quantity of answers, you could and should write more IF it is relevant. That’s my opinion.
May 22, 2013 at 9:08 am #126655Miketye,
I was wondering exactly the same thing. Especially as the examiners guidance keeps mentioning people writing down more answers than necessary. Personally I’m not going to risk only giving 4 answers if I I know 6. I’m not going to risk losing a mark for choosing a wrong answer from my choice of 6 so, time allowing, all 6 will be going down. I can’t see them knocking marks off if there is enough info there to score full marks. I’m assuming the examiners are more pointing out the potential waste of time rather than you not being allowed to put more answers than necessary down.
Of course if your first 4 answers all score the max marks, then any extra will be a waste, of course we all know that, but I like to have a safety net if one of my first 4 answers isn’t good enough to score full marks.
May 28, 2013 at 12:58 pm #127461I agree with nps – I would prefer to have a substitute just in case one of my original 4 wasn’t up to the mark.
You could always list your 4 points 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then, as a short sentence after the fourth you could write “Other possible audit steps could include ….” and give your 2 substitutes.
The question you should always repeatedly be asking yourself is “What have I got to lose?”
Ok, a bit of time – but only a tiny marginal bit of time. There is NO NEGATIVE marking in any of the ACCA exams so don’t worry about that
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