• We are pleased to announce that the winner of our Feedback Prize Draw for the Winter 2024-25 session and winning £150 of gift vouchers is Zhao Liang Tay. Congratulations to Zhao Liang. If you fancy winning £150 worth of gift vouchers (from a major UK store) for the Summer 2025 exam sitting for just a few minutes of your time throughout the session, please see our website at https://www.acted.co.uk/further-info.html?pat=feedback#feedback-prize for more information on how you can make sure your name is included in the draw at the end of the session.
  • Please be advised that the SP1, SP5 and SP7 X1 deadline is the 14th July and not the 17th June as first stated. Please accept out apologies for any confusion caused.

CP3 IAI March 2021 Language Difficulty Level

N

NewStudent

Active Member
In CP3 X Assignment Solutions the rule for sentence of appropriate length is:

An overly-long sentence is one containing more than one message; too many sub-clauses; which, if spoken, needs repeated breaks to articulate; or is over 35 words in length.

The question paper for CP3 March 2021 is at http://www.actuariesindia.org/downloads/exampapers/march2021/Q_CP3.pdf and answer paper is at http://www.actuariesindia.org/downloads/exampapers/march2021/CP3.pdf

I have found sentences that in my opinion are overly long. For e.g.

  1. This has resulted in a hardship for retirees as the pool of money which they had saved towards retirement may not provide the kind of income which they had originally envisaged
  2. The fund choices that are available vary, funds can be low risk investing in say only Government bonds, medium risk investing in a combination of Government bonds and debentures or higher risk investing in shares of companies
  3. In case she decides she is better off using the income drawdown approach, she first needs to decide how much of the money she would want to drawdown every year
  4. For the time being let us assume that she is happy with what she would have got as an annuity which could be Rs.1.6 lakh or Rs.1.1 lakh depending on whether she has commuted one third of the corpus.

My query is: Is this type of sentence construction valid in exam or will it be penalised ? I expect answer from Acted Tutors / Markers without making any assumption about IAI / IFoA exam marking standards (or differences in their approach) but purely from syllabus objective point.
 
Hello

Thank you for your post.

The first point I would make in relation to this is that one or two sentences which are a little long in a script will not be a key factor in determining whether a script is a pass or fail. The key areas to focus on are ensuring the communication is simple, avoids jargon, meets the needs of the audience and is logically structured.

The specimen answers provided by the examiner are good passes but alternative ways of covering points can be equally valid, and this includes re-expressing some of the sentences so they are shorter. I would not be overly concerned if I was marking a script and the examples you've given were used provided the rest of the script was clear and met the needs of the audience.

That said simplicity is always important and I like that you are showing appreciation for this. So when constructing sentences in your communications it is a good idea to err on the side of shorter sentences where possible. I would be looking for opportunities to do so. For example, in your second example above I would include a full stop after 'vary' and then started with 'For example, ...'.

I hope this helps and your studies are going well.

Helen
 
Thanks for your guidance. I always construct sentences with single point only. I will stop worrying if 1 or 2 sentences are little long. My studies are progressing well and I will focus on overall aim of communication - satisfaction of audience and other points as you mentioned
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top