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Dear Tutor
I am going through past exams and I am a bit confused with the ACCA’s answer to June 2011 Question 1a.
The question key word is ‘analyse’.
I am very puzzled with the proposed answer, where after short description of situation so much emphasis is put on monitoring what can happen in the future. I would never ever answer the question in this form.
I even went to ACCA question verb exam technique article and by ‘analyse’ they mean:
Break into separate parts and discuss, examine, or interpret each part
Key tips:
Give reasons for the current situation or what has happened.So it suggests looking into the past, not into the future.
Please let me know if answer focusing on current situation and reasons for it would be equally generously marked?
Thank you in advance for your help.
I think that ‘analyse’ might shift its meaning depending on which paper you are doing.
EG F5 you are likely to analyse what happened in the past, so that you might be giving reasons for an adverse variance.
With P3 the emphasis is nearly always on the present situation and what the future might hold. So here, it is important that the government has funded 130 charging stations because, without those, the limited range of the cars would be a big problem.
Similarly, the fact that the government subsidised the business in the past is relevant, not because of the subsidy as such, but because it might have implications if the company decided to off-shore some production in the future.
The past is past, but effects can hang over the future and influence future decisions. For example a strong brand would have been created historically, but positions the company for the future.
HTH
Thank you for your help.
I just was very confused with the ‘monitoring’ stuff in every paragraph.
To me monitoring what will happen in the future somehow is not relevant to analysis of macro enviroment.
I always thought thet marks are given for ‘relevant’ answers.
Now I just checked and this changed in December 2010 – now points are given for ‘appropriate’ answers which seems much wider than ‘relevant’ 🙂Does it mean that we should write EVERYTHING we can think of in an answer?
I am a mathematician and tend to be very consciese in my answers. Should I just let my imagination take over?
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