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Keys to sucsess

Simon Groom stresses the importance of exam technique – it can boost your performance by 10%

If someone told you that a particular topic would be relevant in every exam and would be worth around 10% of the available marks, it would be worth spending time familiarising yourself with it. That applies to exam technique, and I’ve produced a few key points that you must consider in whatever exam you are doing.
1. Time allocation is the key Get this wrong and you could end up missing out a question – with disastrous consequences. For a three-hour exam with 100 marks, you should allocate 1.7 minutes per mark. I know that this only comes to 170 minutes, but this gives you a 10-minute window to review the paper at the beginning, and your answers at the end.
2. Treat each part of the question as a separate question with its own time allocation For example, a six-mark part should not take you more than 10 minutes. If you miss out a six-mark part of a 20-mark question, you will score no more than 14 marks, no matter how good your answer is.
3. Read the requirement carefully to make sure that you answer the question set Look out for ‘and’ in a single requirement as this means the examiner wants two things – and to get full marks you must do both. For example, ‘calculate the corporation tax payable AND state the due date for payment’. Here, if you forget the due date you are throwing away one mark.
4. In computational questions make sure that you show your workings For example, if you are doing a marginal relief calculation and you make a mistake putting the numbers into the calculator, you will get no marks, even if your method is correct, unless you write out the calculation in your answer. These are the basic marks that you must be getting if you want to ensure a pass, so don’t throw them away.
5. In written questions make sure that you keep your sentences short, no more than two lines long, and make one point per sentence Before you start the next sentence you should leave a one-line gap. Not only does this give the marker a good first impression, it also makes it very easy to award you marks!
6. If you come across a point that you don’t know, take an educated guess and move on to points that you do know Such points will rarely be worth more than one mark, and your time is better spent doing what you can do rather than worrying about what you can’t!
And, finally, I know it is easy to say, but DON’T PANIC! You have to remain focused at all times during the exam to ensure that you score the easy marks. If the exam is difficult, it will be difficult for everyone.
When I speak to students after the results a large number tell me they have no idea about how they passed because the exam had been so difficult. But invariably these are the students who just got on with it during the three hours and worried afterwards!
• Simon Groom is Head of National Tax Training at Tolley, part of LexisNexis, and is also a member of ATT Council

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