How to Use ACCA past papers to pass?
If you are an ACCA student, then one of the first things you need to understand is that in order to pass ACCA exams, you will need to follow a very structured and disciplined approach to your studies. For this, you will need to know how to create a good study plan to make sure that you pass your exam.
Firstly, you need to make sure that you are having regular study sessions, even if they are of short duration then it is fine but you don’t want to be studying once a week for six hours straight, it is too long and by the time you come to next week, you are going to have forgotten it. You need to set yourself little bits of time and you need to study in short chunks so that your mind can take its time to absorb the information.
You also need to think about how much time do you have until the exam and how many syllabus topics are there that you need to cover because you don’t want to be spending too much time on some areas of the syllabus and thus not having enough time for other areas of the syllabus. Your basic study plan is number of days or number of weeks available divided by the number of topics that you need to cover on the syllabus that is broadly it but you then need to focus on going for short spaces of time to study in those shorts pieces of time about an hour, I would suggest you should do the following.
Whenever you start a new session of study, firstly recap the last session. Whatever you studied last you need to revise that first in your next session. People don’t do this and it’s so important, you need to do a short question, even a couple of multiple-choice questions to remind yourself and to reinforce the learning that you had from your previous session. This means you can reinforce the learning no more than twenty minutes, fifteen minutes maybe, maybe not even that long just a few questions in order to remind yourself of what you did in the previous session.
Once you have revised the previous lessen then you should go through the new syllabus area. Read it, try and understand it but most importantly do simple questions and illustrations. This is going to be 20 to 30 minutes of your daily study session. Again if you think about what this is doing, it is reinforcing learning from the previous session and then adding on top of that but doing it quickly with simple illustrations and short questions. Don’t spend much more than 20 to 30 minutes, maybe a little bit more, if you’ve got a longer session to do but you don’t want to be studying and learning loads of new material in one session because you won’t remember it once you’ve covered a syllabus area.
Attempt Past Papers after each topic
Next, you need to get the past paper questions on that area and you do one or two or more because that is where you’re going to learn the most from this. You’re working your way through to do these past paper questions. Doing past paper questions is very important because this is the level of difficulty that you will face in the exams you’re going to get questions like the ones in the past papers. So you need to do them from the very start so that’s how every session should be.
Set realistic targets
Number three don’t be too inflexible or unrealistic that will demotivate you, do not think you can cover the whole syllabus in two weeks because when you stop hitting those targets, you will get demotivated and you won’t feel like studying anymore. It is very important to set yourself realistic targets and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t hit them, try your best but remember you’ve got other things going on in your life beside these exams and you need to try and fit those in and you will get there as long as you follow the simple steps that we are discussing here for you so that’s how you create a study plan.
Dive deep into the past papers
Now in order to easily pass your ACCA exams the most important thing to do after covering the syllabus is to thoroughly practice the past papers. You will not pass unless you adequately use past papers. Now, once you start solving the past papers, you will realize that you will get it wrong many times, rarely any student manages to get past papers right the first time. A lot of students get demotivated because they study a chapter or a topic and then try out the past paper question and once they get it wrong they get demotivated and think that they will not be able to do it. You will not get your past paper questions right the first time when you do them, so don’t expect it.
What you need to be able to do is do enough past papers by the time you set the exam. You get them wrong at the start you practice them and towards the exam, you start to get them right but if you don’t start using past papers early enough you will still be in the fears where you’re getting them wrong and that’s why it is crucial that you start early enough and use the past paper questions or exam standard questions and make sure that you’re at the fears of getting it right by the time of the exam.
Learning from the examiners’ answer is more important than getting the question correct, the follow-on or the next step from not getting it right is that you need to get the examiners answer and you need to learn why it is that you didn’t get it right. That is the whole point of doing the past paper not to get it right but to get it wrong and then learn from the examiners answer so the next time that topic comes up you will get it right or at least less wrong than you did that time and you’ve got to accept.