Taking SA4 for the 3rd time. Can't seem to get more than 30 - 35% when I mark exams papers. Can anyone help?
Are you getting FA/B in your previous attempts? If so then it is just a case of upping the bar. The key is to know the material inside out - if you don't then you will stuggle. If you work in the practice area then you should also have good knowledge about current issues - if you don't then make sure you do lots of extra reading. In fact, even if you work in the practice area you should do lots of extra reading. In the end, all other things equal, it will come down to exam technique. Ignore any ActEd notes telling you to spend loads of time drafting pretty answers - you will need every minute of the exam to pour the contents of your mind onto paper. Recent SA4 papers have split 2 or 3 main questions into lots of 5-10 mark chunks; i.e. lots of parts, no time to develop a reasoned piece of advise, but lots of opportunity to pick marks up by generating a lot of ideas.
Not sure I fully agree with the last respondent advocating dumping every thought down on paper. They need to be relevant thoughts to the question and well developed. I would definitely say read the qn then read it again, brainstorm BUT THEN FILTER. This is an APPLICATION paper. So whilst you may need different ideas, they all need to be logical and justified to the scenario. Remember the criteria that is often quoted is : 'fitness to take on a professional position' or something along those lines. Does a jumble of facts constitute this? I'm not saying the seek grammatical perfection but rather that they are looking for reasoning to what you say. Have you considered exam counselling? Its not cheap but at the last hurdle, does that matter? Or any other different way of getting coaching eg tutorial, revision courses. Bit late this time around, but if you are not successful this time, I'd definitely find new avenues so that apathy/boredom doesn't kick in. Hope Sept is your turn!
I agree with bystander that everything you write needs to be relevant but, and this is a big but, if you spend too much time brainstorming on scrap paper then you will probably not have time to get enough points on the marking schedule. When I say write down the content of your mind I was trying to convey the idea that you will need to put down a LOT of information to get a pass on this paper. Hopefully, your depth of knowledge and breadth of understanding will then shine through - even if a few of your answers are scrappy. This is just my opinion. But I first attempted this paper believing that the overriding criterion was to demonstrate my professional readiness and to try to produce answers that resembled advice. I did better in my second attempt when I sacrificed coherence for information. Maybe it's more of a reflection of the exam than the candidate that I passed the second paper rather than the first.
format for exam answers hi guys, wishing to tap your brains... in the SA4 exam, do you think bullet points answer format is acceptable? i.e. do you need to have complete sentences?
Rhoda, no easy answer on this one. There will be parts of questions where bullet points might be appriopriate - e.g. where you are asked to list things. But even here a disjointed fact might not be enough to get the mark, without some supporting comment to put it into context. If you look at examiners solutions, most of these are set out in a bullet point format - so this implies that it is information they are looking for rather than proper sentence structure and prose style. However, some questions do require a discussion and maybe the examiners report is just an outline of factors that should have been included and not a model solution. The overriding criterion for a pass in an SA subject is to demonstrate your readiness to take on a professional role - and sticking to bullet points may hinder your ability to demonstrate higher order skills, such as judgement, analysis and synthesis. Note also that approx 15-20% of the marks on the paper may be for communication - though how this filters through to the marking schedule, I have no idea. If you read my previous comments you'll see I believe your primary objective should be to get as much relevant information down as possible - with style/communication issues secondary.
hi ExamFatigued, thanks for your advice. i think you are right, i should get a LOT more info into the answers then i've previously done. just that s'times in the exam i've a dilemma whether the examiner will understand what i say if i only do bullets. i hope u get over ur fatigue soon.
My understanding is that for all exams, whether SA level or not, bullet points is what they want from start to finish. As long as you put enough explanation in your bullets, so that they understand what you're saying, you should be fine. Full sentences are not necessary. Isn't this true for SA4 too? The only time you wouldn't use bullets and would use full sentences is if you're drafting (which of course is very possible in SA exams). If you haven't been asked to draft, there will be no marks available for communication, although of course grouping your ideas and having a rough order of importance would help the examiners mark your paper and make you look more worthy of the FIA.
