I am Mr. Temitayo Stephen, your regular host on this exam planet. This special report is on why we fail our professional exams and what we should do about it. In this series of free e-mail reports, I will teach you the secrets of passing your ACCA exams without stress. With the free e-mail reports, I am going to use a self discovered system people have been using to stand tall among other professionals which will give you a huge advantage over others, enable you build a flexible career and get better opportunities. So, in the first e-mail report, we discussed the 5 common reasons students fail in an exam. In this report, we would be going extra mile in learning more on why students fail their exams.
According to Napoleon Hill, whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Belief is a mental representation, treated in various academic disciplines, especially philosophy and psychology, of a sentient being’s attitude toward the likelihood or truth of something. It is an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof. Our belief system can be classified into conventional and personal beliefs. These can be either positive or negative.
Conventional beliefs – are beliefs people have about their environment. It could be true or false
Personal beliefs – are beliefs formed by us from childhood. In most cases personal beliefs are influenced by conventional beliefs because it is in the outside world.
‘Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it are issues of life’, so says the Holy books. So, guard whatever goes into our mind. Positive beliefs are in most cases forced on our minds. For instance, if your fellow ACCA student tells you that ACCA P4 is a difficult course and you should stay away from it. It is his/her belief and if you don’t discard that opinion immediately, it will go into your mind and at the end of the day you will accept the course as a difficult one. Furthermore, you should also mind what you say to yourself. According to research carried out by American psychologists 80% of our thoughts are negative. Please kindly ask yourself ‘what are the affirmative thoughts (beliefs) I have been conceiving and what are the negative ones?’
Socrates believes that ‘everything is in a state of flux’. This means that things are always changing. Jobs roles are changing day by day. Some changes may be as a result of availability of new technology, new system or cost reduction. So it means that you should be prepared for anything because things are moving fast, just like Scurry and Scurvy in who moved my cheese. Therefore, to be sincere with you, you don’t wish things to be easier because they will always change. Change here might be more difficult but rewarding, so the best thing you can do to yourself is to become better and better every day in every way by allowing change.
Therefore, you should search for things that will help you achieve your goals faster and quicker especially when preparing for a professional examination. Like I have said previously, you should always be responsive to your environment.
Furthermore, the quest for a healthy work/life balance has always created new motivations for those seeking alternatives to classroom training. Distance learning is effective ‘home study’ – you buy printed course materials, often with the back-up of access to tutors and study at your own pace. This is advisable for those who live far from classroom locations and rarely have time to attend classes.
E-learning is a more sophisticated version of distance learning, with downloadable materials often accompanied by online tests (with immediate marking) and easy access to tutors by e-mails. This by logical reasoning is a highly effective way to study, and the more innovative delivery of the course the better your interest. Many e-learning courses also have online discussion forums, where you can chat and share tips or concerns with fellow students. Distance learning and e-learning are less expensive than most conventional classroom courses. The ‘downside’ is that you don’t have a tutor standing in front of you, to whom you can address questions there and then – but this is often outweighed by flexibility advantage.
Let’s hear this testimony: Mr. Richard who works in an auditing firm in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria has a degree in accounting. Unfortunately, he has been in the audit firm for five good years without any promotion because he has no professional qualifications. However, few individuals who have joined the organization lately have been promoted twice within a year because they have ACCA qualifications.
Richard became very frustrated because in his department, apart from his boss, he is the most experienced among them but they earn far above him. So, he decided to write ACCA exam because he knew that with the certificate, the company has no option than to promote him
Furthermore, Richard could not quit his job because he has no one to fall back on. Which means that he would be starting all over again because he has no professional qualification. Likewise, he could not quit his job to write ACCA exams because it is from his salary that he would make the payment for exam fees and tuition.
As I write this now, Richard has registered for ACCA exams and tuition but he couldn’t attend the physical class because his job does not give the opportunity for such advancement. However, a friend suggested an E-Class Video lectures but he refused because he didn’t see the possibilities, and usefulness of Distant learning Lectures.
Unfortunately, he could neither attend the physical classes nor write the exams. The money, energy, emotions invested were wasted. Of course, he failed the diet but because of his determination he didn’t give up.
He registered for the last December Diet exams but this time around he had realized his mistakes. So, he decided to go for a flexible option which was the distant learning lecture. He even requested for an offline distant learning lecture which encompasses all he needed to pass like; updated questions and answers, examine tips, examiner’s report on each paper, etc.
Currently, Richard is writing his last two papers at professional level this coming diet and he is so excited because he cannot wait to become an ACCA certified.
Now let us see 3 Facts why distance learning is failure proof
Easy Access to Use and Learn at your own pace: With video lectures, your students can learn anywhere from their mobile devices: laptops, tablets or smartphones. This makes it flexible for you to be in a class especially those numbers of hours you spend in gisting can be converted to study. Every teacher knows that each student has his own pace of learning. With video lectures, all students can learn at their individual pace, which will maximize the results of e-Learning. This will help the students have an in-depth understanding because they can always playback to jot notes unlike physical classes when most student are very shy to raise their hands to get clarification when the need is necessary.
Syllabus based and simplified: All E-Class Video Lectures are prepared based on the syllabus. It is ensured that no topic is left out. Furthermore, it is prepared in a simplified format. This means that, it has been broken down to bits (topics and sub-topics) for easy assimilation.
3 Folds Questions and Answers Class: E-Class Video Lectures offer you an amazing three fold questions and Class. First fold is the questions and answers in E-Learning Material which contain all past questions and researched questions exhaustively dealt with by providing solution to the questions. Second fold is the Questions and Answers Discussion Forum per course. This is where tutors and students meet to solve more questions in an e-mail format. Additionally in this forum, tutors prepare 7 questions based on topics every week for students to attempt. The tutor provides the solution of the previous week and the question for the new week. However, students can also post questions and solutions where further clarification is needed. Third fold is the 6 hours online questions and answers live class per course which is organized a month to the exam. In this class, tutor and student meet once again for questions and answers. In the online live class tutor will solve questions and provide guide for students. Students can also ask questions where clarification is needed either through live voice or live chat. This amazing thing about the online live class is that the replay is immediately available for students to go through once again as soon as the live class ends.
After acquiring all the required knowledge students still find it difficult to pass the exam. From the survey of 3789 conducted, we observed that there are some measures students fail to put in place when preparing for an exam.
Please leave your comment below for feedback and you can also share your experience with us.
See you soon….
Tayo Stephen,
