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April 2019 Paper

D

dannyp123

Member
Hi, some questions on the April 2019 paper solutions (ASET). Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

First, the solution has both an executive summary, and a summary at the end of the main text. The course notes in chapter 8 suggest that this should not be the case. I.e. no summary at the end of the main text should be given, if there is an executive summary. (page 128-129 of course notes).

Why is this the case for the 2019 paper, and what should we do in the exam?
-Executive summary and no main text summary
-Executive summary and main text summary
-No executive summary and main text summary? Thanks!

Another issue with the 2019 paper is that the explanation of the simple error (more members assumed to be single than there should have been) seems to be complicated, long, and including unnecessarily complex language and sentence structures (top of page 14 in ASET). To me this doesn't feel like a good example of the clear communication that the course is trying to teach? For example, one of the sentences states "in a past analysis, the erroneous classification (described in 1. above) was used to make an incorrect deduction. Specifically, it was deduced that...".... couldn't this be simply put as 'an error in the classification lead to'? The course content really emphasises the use of plain English where possible, which doesn't seem to be on show here.

Reason I mention the above is that, as a student studying this course, it is hard to grasp what type of communication the subject is aiming at if the examples provided don't seem to enforce the content theory. Either that or I am misunderstanding the application of the theory.

Thanks,
Dan
 
Hi - re the executive summary point, FWIW I would recommend taking either the first (if it feels appropriate to use a top-down approach) or third (if it feels appropriate to use a bottom-up approach) of these three alternatives that you list. The example you mention uses the second - please see this previous post about that:
https://www.acted.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/executive-summary.17525/#post-68956

Re your other point - yes, agreed: that sentence could be improved! The intention of the example solutions is not to provide perfect answers, but to show what would be 'good enough' to (comfortably) pass. Students have fed back that they find this more useful for preparation.
 
Lindsay Smitherman said:
Hi - re the executive summary point, FWIW I would recommend taking either the first (if it feels appropriate to use a top-down approach) or third (if it feels appropriate to use a bottom-up approach) of these three alternatives that you list. The example you mention uses the second - please see this previous post about that:
https://www.acted.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/executive-summary.17525/#post-68956

Re your other point - yes, agreed: that sentence could be improved! The intention of the example solutions is not to provide perfect answers, but to show what would be 'good enough' to (comfortably) pass. Students have fed back that they find this more useful for preparation.
Click to expand...

Great, thanks.
 
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