Okay, sure. I did a few practice exams to make sure I knew the course and to time myself.
I honestly spent an unexceptional amount of time studying for accounting - but I found what I was doing suited the subject and I ended up doing a lot better than I expected. So, I thought I'd share it with this year's cohort.
My full typical studying cycle
1. Before class, watch the Edrolo videos on the upcoming topic. If you don’t like the speaker, try putting on some soft music in the background or listen to Michael Allison on Youtube, who’s equally good.
2. In class, just sit and listen to the teacher. You should be hearing everything for the second time and you can fill in the blanks of what you didn’t understand the first time around.
3. Do the exercises. Enough until you feel confident to begin revising – usually them all.
4. Before the SAC, gather up as many practice SACs as you can and do them. Alongside that, use the Checkpoints or NEAP book to integrate the tougher exam questions in.
5. Be proactive about not repeating your mistakes.Every time you make a mistake in step 4 (even silly ones) write it down in a list.
6. Read your mistake list each time you sit down to study for the SAC, and on the day of the SAC.
7. After the SAC, ask to see it and jot down all of the errors you made. Add them to your list. Don’t put them in a separate category, just put them as extra dot points. For the exam, mistakes made in a SAC or in SAC revision won’t matter.
That’s it!
So what about the exam?
Admittedly, I gave up on the subject for the exam period because I was certain it was going to be in the bottom two of my subjects. But it didn’t matter that I didn’t study for days on end, because I understood the content and revised every mistake I’d ever made. Double-entry accounting is weird at first, but with enough practice and questioning the meaning and purpose of everything you do, it’ll be logical.
Year 12 Accounting can be thought of as a big set of fringe cases plus some tables to fill and understand, and all you have to do is investigate how they can be recorded in them. With enough practice of the questions, the theory questions become self-explanatory too.
Any more tips?
• You don’t need to ROTE learn (memorise through repetition) anything. See it as a last resort. If you can bring yourself to do a ton of questions, you won’t need to. You won’t need cue cards or a long set of notes if you’ve answered the few theory questions and definitions there are in each SAC whilst revising a few times before.
• Excel saves time. If you know how (if you don’t, be sure to ask your teacher because there’s Excel SACs) you should be able to do Checkpoints and some practice SACs electronically. Further, if you ever feel super hard pressed for time in the middle of the year (you will) don’t be afraid to ask your teacher if you can just use Excel for a few exercises.
• Don’t leave concepts behind. Particularly the double-entry system, principles/characteristics, the journals and the reports. The evaluating performance SAC at the end will tie everything together and make sure you understand how it all works.
If I could give it another go?
• I’d definitely do more practice exams. Whilst I’m happy with my score, I never realised how close I was to the top. These can really help you to spot the really weird parts of the course that I’m not comfortable with so I could have revised them further.
• Have a tutor or a good teacher on-call. Frankly, the teacher I had wasn’t all that experienced in teaching the course. I found some bits hard and spent too much time fussing over some extreme fringe cases (i.e. intuitively understanding reverse FIFO in sales returns and GST on prepaid sales).
• Study the really odd theory questions that pop up in each exam and hand in more practice 5+ mark theory answers to be marked by my teacher.
I hope that helps. Good luck with Accounting this year guys!
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