Study tips?

– Attend lectures from a good tuition provider if possible. You could still buy some distance learning course right now that have recorded lectures you can use and watch in your own time i.e. Kaplan. If this is not possible Opentuition lecture are very good (personally use them on the side of my main course). Ken I believe even wrote a good few of the technical articles on ACCA’s website so he obviously knows his stuff.

– Practice as much questions as you can in the time remaining. Preferably under timed conditions, but you may need to do some untimed in the beginning to see where you are at first.

– Put yourself through as much mock exams as you can before the exam. There is three in the BPP texts for example. Kaplan offer interim and final mock examinations with their texts, see their website for details. Becker also sell a mock exam and interim exam pack for around £5 I believe. The ones given by my paid course and text books was my personal go to. But a free mock exam would simply be practising one of the past papers from the ACCA website.

– If you can get as much question that you practice marked by a lecture, or anyone qualified to do so, for example. It’s all great practising by yourself and reviewing your own answers, but as my lecturer put it “what makes you qualified to correct your answer?”. Reading examiners solutions is all well and good but often these are too long compared to what would actually be expected of you and don’t give you any direct or personal feedback.

– Read the examiners reports! A lot of students ignore these and end up falling into the same traps many before them have falling into. The examiners reports are the examiners direct feedback and advise on what is/isn’t best practice in the exam. Read at least the past three. But more importantly make sure you learn something from them. Make sure that after you’ve read them and taking on board the examiners feedback and advice you can confidently say “Yes I will do XYZ now in the exam and won’t do ABC”.

– Read the technical articles. ACCA have approved them and put them on their website for a very good reason. They don’t do things just for the fun of it. They are part of what you need to study and ignoring them could prove fatal.

Do as much as you can between now and the exam and the very best of luck to you.

Here is the advice from the last P3 global prize winner as per interview in Student Accountant magazine (a good read along with PQ magazine imo).

“Question practice is one of the most important things you can do – in the exam, you must be able to apply all the knowledge you have gained, and completing past questions is the best way to learn how to do this. In the case of P3, this means knowing the relevant models and how to apply them in a practical context.

I think you should also give sensible ‘real life’ advice in your answers, but be able to justify your opinions – there are often no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers to the questions, but a well-reasoned, commercially sensible answer goes a long way in the exam.”

She then goes on to give advice regarding exam technique. Read the April 2017 edition to see the rest of her interview.

Thanks a bunch. I’m starting my prep only tomo. Writing the pending p1 2 and 3 this june 😀 hope to qualify in July. Good luck to you too !!