When you encounter different exams you will be faced with different challenges. In a discipline often driven by numeric requirements the ability to respond clearly to ‘wordy questions’ can make a real difference to your marks. The following exam advice comes from the demanding ACCA F5 syllabus – covering the requirements of performance management accounting.

Business and financial syllabus candidates who find they struggle with the mechanics of writing will find this particularly useful. Your main focus should be taking the time to understand the examiner’s instructions – understanding which of those instructions will produce high marks is just the focus needed for a successful score.

Using the Paper F5 exam as a guide, you’ll find the following requirements to be essential for demonstrating knowledge of performance management:

The basic requirements include …

Outline
Be sure to keep your outline fairly brief as well as well organised. It is simply an overview, without the level of detail that would be required by the ‘describe’ instruction, for example. Since it requires less detail, you could be asked to outline a bigger topic than you would have time to describe.

Identify
This means to pinpoint and list. It can be quite a simple requirement of performance management accounting, requiring knowledge rather than skill.

Describe
When asked to ‘describe’ you are expected to give a thorough narrative. For example, if you were being asked to describe suitable non?financial performance indicators for a hospital, you would be expected to describe indicators such as number of patient complaints, bed occupancy rate, number of admissions per employee. It would not be enough to merely ‘list’ these indicators. You would have to go a step further and describe how they might be calculated.

Suggest
There may be more than one answer to these questions, so you are merely suggesting your best possible answer. It means give a suitable idea or solution, bearing in mind that there will probably be more than one. For example, you might be asked to suggest how a target cost gap can be closed. Your answer could only ever be a suggestion as there will be many possible ways to close a cost gap.

Explain
This means stating the reason behind something; say why it is as it is rather than just stating that it is. It is a very common requirement and it requires understanding as well as knowledge.