Help me with time pressure in exam

The advice that I normally give to despairing students that are struggling to get to grips with P7 is split into 2 parts

The first part is essentially reading and re-reading:

course notes (and listening to the lectures)
examiner’s reports
last 10 technical articles
revision kit questions and answers (as often as you can!)
exam technique article “from a markers’ perspective” (you’ll find a link to that towards the foot of the P7 home page

This I recommend up to 2 weeks before the exam and then I suggest that those same students post again for the second part of the advice

You, I assume, are a retaking student so I assume also that you are on top of the subject matter and that you believe that it is solely your examination technique that is letting you down

So here’s the second part of my advice on getting totally prepared for P7:

This second part of advice can be combined with repeated reading of the kit so all is not lost!

OK, second half of preparation exercises:

You have been just reading endlessly since I gave you the first part of the preparation exercises and now it’s time to practice your own answers and examination technique

Have you noticed that invariably the marking scheme for auditing answers is based upon the rule of thumb, one sentence, one markable point, one mark

Incidentally, you may also have noticed that the presentation of “official” auditing answers is rather less than reader-friendly … so we need to correct that by breaking down our answers into easily digestible points

Hopefully you now accept that “one sentence, one markable point, one mark” principle and we know in advance how many marks there are available and how many minutes there are in which to score those marks – if you’re taking the UK variant, you’re going to have to try and guess the mark allocation for the separate parts of a multi-part question requirement

One of the recurrent comments from ACCA in any written paper is that “there continues to be a lack of visible evidence of the planning process”, so we need to address that point too

Planning gives an answer direction and structure and results in a more professional attempt than an unplanned answer

But how long to spend on planning?

Take the number of marks in a question (or part question) and divide by 2 and that will give you the number of minutes that should be devoted to planning that question (or part question)

So in a 35 mark question 1, 17.5 minutes is devoted to planning an answer that addresses ALL parts of that question

But a 35 mark question has a total time allocation in the exam of 63 minutes and, if you spend 17.5 minutes planning, you will have only 45.5 minutes to write out your answer from the plan in proper structured sentences, properly headed, logically sequenced, and sufficient to score you a pass mark

35 marks, 45.5 minutes

That’s just 1.3 minutes per sentence. 1 minute 18 seconds to write a sentence

So how long are your sentences? Do you know PRECISELY how much you can write in 1 minute 18 seconds? There’s no thought involved – you already know what you are going to say because you’ve planned your answer. This is just a mechanical exercise of writing

Do it NOW.

Get a book, revision kit, newspaper, washing machine instruction manual, TV times, anything! … a pen, a clean sheet of paper and a friend with a stopwatch.

Open the book (or whatever else you have chosen to copy from) and get your friend to say “Start”.

You copy from that printed document … legibly … until your friend says after 1 minute 18 seconds “Stop”.

How much have you written? Unless your handwriting is unusually large, I doubt that you have written more than 3 lines.

And that represents the MAXIMUM length of any single sentence in your exam answers.

That sentence contains just ONE markable point.

OK, now you know the length of a sentence.

Now address the non-reader-friendly presentation of the ‘official’ answers … simple.

Leave a line between your sentences.

I’ll show you what a difference it makes:

Here are my last 8 points again …

“Get a book, revision kit, newspaper, washing machine instruction manual, TV times, anything! … a pen, a clean sheet of paper and a friend with a stopwatch. Open the book (or whatever else you have chosen to copy from) and get your friend to say “Start”. You copy from that printed document … legibly … until your friend says after 1 minute 18 seconds “Stop”. How much have you written? Unless your handwriting is unusually large, I doubt that you have written more than 3 lines. And that represents the MAXIMUM length of any single sentence in your exam answers. That sentence contains just ONE markable point. OK, now you know the length of a sentence. Now address the non-reader-friendly presentation of the ‘official’ answers … simple. Leave a line between your sentences.”

Which format do you prefer? Which is easier to read? Which format reduces the chances that a marker will miss a markable point because it’s lost in the middle of a
b o r i n g paragraph?

Now we’ve addressed:

overall time allocation,
question time allocation,
the way to achieve sufficient marks for the individual questions, and
presentation of answers

Finally, you need to start practicing the planning exercise so that it doesn’t come as a surprise to you on June 4

Pick any question at random from a revision kit

Calculate your planning time (marks / 2)

Read the question requirement(s)

Read the question

Start planning (allocate planning time to ALL separate parts of the question – same way ie marks/2 = planning minutes

Just one word bullet points, not full sentences. This plan is for YOUR benefit and is a way to jog your memory when it comes to writing down your thoughts.

It serves also to make more easy the collection of similar thoughts

It makes it easier to determine appropriate headings for the collection of similar points

It also helps to prevent unnecessary repetition within the separate parts of your answers (“as previously mentioned in part (a) above …”)

It assists in structure

It avoids the unprofessional afterthoughts that are squeezed in down the margin of the answer booklet

And it satisfies the ACCA’s recurrent comment about a “lack of visible evidence …”

Repeatedly re-read the (part) question requirement

If you have selected a 35 marker for this exercise, STOP planning after 17.5 minutes

Now ask yourself these questions:

Have I planned answers for every part of the question?
Have I raised sufficient points in each part to get me a pass mark
How many planned points do I have in total – is it 18+?

Now check out the printed solution. As you read through that printed answer, try to find the markable point within each sentence of that solution (there isn’t always one point in a sentence, and sometimes there are multiple points within one sentence)

Annotate the markable points in the margin as you read through (or highlight them) but avoid the danger of simply covering the entire answer with yellow highlight ink! On reflection, better to annotate in the margin. A one-word summary of the main point within that sentence

Then compare with your own efforts and see WHY the ones in the answer were relevant and ask why YOU hadn’t included them in your plan (if you hadn’t)

What if, within the allocated planning time, you can’t get near the required number of marks within your plan? When I was a student I remember reading answers and saying “Yes, I knew that, and that, and that …”

So why didn’t I write them down in my plan?

Read this article:

“General Exam Technique from a marker’s perspective” written by a member of the P4 (yes, P4) marking team but it tells the same story that I do!

You’ll find it towards the bottom of the P7 home page on this site

If you’re stuck with an insufficiency of planned points (you’ve only got three things to say for a 10 mark part-question), we need more

Read the question requirement again – can you maybe interpret it wider and open up a further avenue of thought?

Can you make 2 points out of one planned point?

Can you make 2 points by avoiding the word “and”?

Is there an “and” in the question indicating that there are 2 separate points to this 10 mark part question? For example “Compare AND contrast” or “What evidence should you expect to find on the audit file AND what further procedures would you recommend”

If none of those work, take one of your planned points and think of a way of saying it again but without using any of the same words (other than ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘it’ and similar insignificant words)

Yes, I am suggesting that you repeat the point in your answer whilst avoiding expressions that emulate those used previously (and that’s an example of precisely what I mean!)

Now you’re into the exercise of planning answers. It probably won’t come naturally to you but you have two and a half months to practice the technique

And, meanwhile, start reading (just reading) through a revision kit … question, answer, question, answer, question, answe…..

Let’s hope it works!

Let me know how you’re getting on

OK?