According to my experience of studying ACCA, I feel that examiners' feedback on exams is one of the most important resources for candidates to utilise, in order to successfully pass exams. I have gathered some examiners' useful feedback from student accountant which may be helpful to candidates studying for ACCA exams. In this article, I want to post one of those useful comments made by examiners and talk about what l learnt from the comments.
‘Many discursive answers were too short for the marks on offer, which suggests that a substantial number of candidates place numerical or technical ability over conceptual understanding. In future, it is hoped that more answers are more balanced, as technical and numerical ability goes hand in hand with conceptual understanding.’ Made by the examiner for Paper 2.4 (which is F9 in new syllabus), this comment was printed in the October 2006 of student accountant.
It is not uncommon that many candidates spent majority of the time to do the computational parts but spent very little time to write theory in a computation and discussion combined question. This meant that good computational answers to calculation parts were frequently accompanied by very limited discursive answers to theory writing parts. This will result in the loss of theory marks which may be important for a candidate to achieve a pass, especially for the questions which comprise a large part of essay writing. A candidate may still fail in the exam if they only practice numerical calculation and don’t learn the theory.
In my opinion, we need to make a balance between conceptual writing and numerical calculation in answering our exam questions. Firstly, during our preparation period, we should not only practice calculation, but learn the theory as well. Secondly we need to allocate the exam time to computational and discursive parts of exam papers evenly according to their available marks. For example, if a question is composed of 5 marks of calculation and 5 marks of theory writing, then we would be better to spend 9 minutes in each part. By complying with these two rules, candidates may increase their chances to successfully pass their exams.
Referring to the useful examiners' feedback, I would agree with the opinion that the feedback provided in the student accountant magazine after each session is valuable, but the really useful feedback for every student would be to see his/her own script and review the comments made by the marker (examiner).
Thus, he/she will learn from the mistakes and improve his/her performance after every exam sitting. How could one understand what he/she has to improve when he/she does not see his/her script?
I think that ACCA should reconsider its policy and if they want to provide a really useful feedback to their students - I believe that this is the way to do it.
I failed an exam three years ago and I sent an attestation request. I paid 50-60 UK pounds and I expected to receive my script with comments form the marker (examiner). Nothing like this - I received a two-page letter stating that all procedures have been followed and no mistakes/discrepancies have been found in the assessment of my script.
The letter gave no detail and no constructive feedback on my performance. There was one sentence saying that of 5 questions I have failed 3 and passed 2 questions. Furthermore, the letter was saying that I could request another attestation review which will be performed by a commission and, of course, that I should pay another 50 UK pounds for 'this service'. Do you really think that this is useful feedback?
Posted by: Worf Smith | 05 December 2008 at 16:34