CA1 acronyms

How many acronyms is too many? I think I've got like 200

 

I thought I was bad enough with 40
Where do you even find 200 from ... ?

 

its entirely a personal thing how many you think you need and helps you

 

I used an online acronym generator to pick "sensible" or easy-to-remember acronyms and basically added to the lists that ACTED has, or just generated new ones if I thought I had a better list

I think I went a bit wild though, in an attempt to break down the core reading into acronyms - some were not so necessary after all as I could remember the lists of points without the acronyms. I went into the exam with about 90 and it seriously helped with paper 2!

 

Speaking about acronyms, I find it easier to use word sentences instead of acronym and the first letter of the word is the key word I want to recall.

Does this way has another 'jargon', like for the letters we have 'acronym'.

 

Do you mean a Mnemonic?

 

yes, thats correct, mnemonics, any pros and cons you guys can think of betweent he acronym vs mnemonic usage for this big subject?

I am wondering if someone who has used mnemonic and passed CA1 could give me a couple of good tips to crack CA1.

 

This week end, I tried to break down the first few chapters in to Acronyms, and it was not bad in the begining, but as the volumes started piling up, it became difficult to remember at 2 levels:

1) Which acronym was associated with which core reading/question

2) what the letters in the acronym stood for ( eg. MM FRM: F - Financial Consequences, R - Risks, M - Models, M- Monitoring models, M - Modification of model/strategies). Also when there are a lot of acronyms, the letters F R or M would stand for different words in another part of core reading/questions, so it is easy to slip up some and misplace some others wrongly.

I feel I will need a constant revision in order to remember the acronyms at both the levels.

Those who have used the acronyms, can they tell what did they do to help prevent the lapses at the 2 levels I stated, otherwise I could be headed for a disaster in exam and would certainly like to change the strategy now when I have time.

I would be really grateful for all the advices.

 

Yep, that's exactly what I tried to avoid. What helped me was to find "sensible" acronyms. By that I mean,

1. Ones that are easy to remember, e.g. BE-FASTER
2. Ones that I can LINK to the core reading using a linking sentence, e.g. When I'm deciding on how to to DISTRIBUTE SURPLUS I would usually prefer it to BE-FASTER (not that you always want the pace of the distribution to be faster! That was just what worked for me, to remember where the acronyms placed in the core reading)

The other thing that helped was that I made sure that all my letters in the acronyms referred to KEY words. Hence, if you can place the acronym in the core reading then you will most likely remember the key words once prompted by the letters of the acronym. Also, of course, don't create too many acronyms. I found this out later than I would have liked. There are some sections where it is in fact rather simpler to just learn the content, which can be helped by thinking logically about what you might expect to be in that list or content or whatever..

Sometimes you don't have the "right" letters and you cannot generate a nice acronym. What I would do then was change one or two of the key words by looking for "synonyms" or similar replacements for the key word - e.g. instead of pace, change it to speed or whatever... that way you can avoid using acronyms like MM FRM unless that really means something significant to you.. Having said that, I see what your MM FRM refers to. I think I probably would not have used an acronym for that detail in my final list of acronyms I committed to memory.

Good luck..

One last point: I'm still waiting for my results!

 

One other thing is identifying the key word can be a challenge as well,

eg. Quantifying the risks that the products, structures, projects are exposed to

now in this sentence there are potentially three words which can be key words ( Risks, Quantifying, Products/structures/projects) to nail the best one is anyones guess but I choose risks from this one, I guess Quantifying can be an alternative choice.

Thanks for your tips tatos, even though you are waiting for the results, you can tell me if you felt any better placed in the exam room by using acronyms strategy, then you would have been otherwise, and how do you feel yourself how your papers have gone.

 

Haven't even built one acronym. Haha

 

In paper 1 I think I only made use of 2 or 3 acronyms so that was really disappointing for me. But paper 2 made up because if I'm not mistaken I had at least one acronym per question for every question except one - And I sincerely believe it saved me a heck of a lot of time and generated points I would not have been able to easily do without these acronyms!

I can only say I hope I passed! Otherwise it's back to the drawing board

Don't worry Edwin! There are many ways to skin a CAt..

 

If this were 2010 then I'd recommend turning the whole course into a system of acronyms, as the examiners seemed to want you to produce lists from the core reading for your answer. The way to pass an exam seemed to be to work out what bit they were asking about, then just regurgitate the core reading.

However, I noticed a distinct change in the style of the answers in the Examiners' reports in 2011/2012, so more and more they seemed to want you to select the most relevant items from the lists in the core reading, and the talk about those in more detail. Acronyms are less helpful for this style of answer.

But who knows, maybe they've changed their mind again and I should have just been regurgitating lists in the April exam.

 

hey tatos, so have you gotten past the CA1, or back to the drawing board, just keen as I have a similar strategy to you and would like to hear and learn from the mistakes you can highlight in this method of studying.

I personally hope you should have passed.

you can PM me is don't want to discuss here.

 

Yeah, they're definitely good for generating points