Two weeks ago my course books arrived for the two new courses that I intend to study for the December exams. I chose to start with the smaller book which was P1 and was immediately reminded of how I felt when I first started studying corporate and business law.
Most of us want to be accountant because we like numbers but here is a whole course where the calculator will stay sadly redundant in your pencil case. Law is quite a complex subject and without a number in sight to comfort the trainee accountant, the subject can seem quite daunting.
As well as learning and understanding the laws and how these are applied, case law is a very important area. In fact within my text book there were over a 100 case laws given as examples. I expect there are very few people who would be able to remember over a hundred cases including the names of the parties involved and the details of the case. If you don’t have a photographic memory, don’t panic. It is still possible to pass law without remembering hundreds of cases and there are ways to remember sufficient to get a good mark.
What matters most is the principle established by the case (i.e. the case viewed as a source of law), not the names of the parties involved. Having stated the principle mention anything else you can remember about the case as this will help you get more marks. Therefore in order of priority, state the legal rule, explain this is from case law, give details of case, give details of the parties involved and finally the date and court.
We all have different ways of memorising information so use which ever technique you find easiest. Some people like to visual information while others find rhymes useful. During my revision for the exam I managed to commit to memory 50 cases by memorising them in small groups of six related to distinct subject areas. It certainly helped me and in fact learning the cases help me have a greater understanding of the law.
Good luck to you if you are studying the law course. There may be no numbers but it is very interesting and I have found the information useful in my work. Perhaps anyone who has done P1 Professional Accountant can give me tips on how to memorise and understand what looks like a lot of material!
I am studying to sit for four papers next year F1- F4. I am finding F4, Law enjoyable in class, because my tutor is very good in explaining cases in Rathmines College - with losts of joke and absurd example that I can never forget, everyone in class including myself look forward to his class. But where I am having complication is in F3, Financial Accounting. I always miss pasting the right cost to the right center. eg: Capital/Revenue, Expenditure/Income, Profit and Loss Account and Balance sheet. Can you please help me???
Posted by: Funmi | 05 October 2008 at 10:33
I will be sitting F4 in december and i am scared to even think of it, all that reading and memorizing is giving me nightmares
Posted by: Ann Maria Duffus-Edwards | 26 July 2008 at 20:35
Excellent posts from both Angela and David.
My academy is based upon such memory techniques and brain based learning. For instance, Angela illustrates how to remember 50 cases! That is some feat - however she used a fundamental principle to help her do this - chunking.
Chunking means breaking down large pieces of information into smaller more manageable chunks. This allowed her to remember not 50 individual bits but around 8 groups. 8 is easier to remember than 50 and then once you remember something about each group the rest tends to flow as you remind yourself.
It is because of this that phone numbers are not written like this 0123456787654
Rather like this 01234 5678 654
See the last one is much easier as this just chunking!
Best wishes
Richard
Posted by: Richard Clarke | 14 July 2008 at 11:27
Oh the memories of Law F4, I completely agree with every word Angela says. I have to say after getting over the shock of F4 and passing the exam with flying colours, it gave me a new found confidence with written exams like, F8 Audit & Assurance and of course P1 Proffessional Accountant.
P1 is very much a common sense paper for accountants, as long as you learn the fundemental lessons that ACCA Are trying to teach you, then you can pretty much answer any question that is thrown your way. (This is of course based on the fact that you have morals and basic ethics, which being ACCA students you will have)
The Corporate Governance portion though takes a little more work and just reading the study text will not be enough, you have to really think outside the box in relation the real word examples like enron.
Without learning about why enron failed, I'm not sure I would have felt as comfortable taking the exam.
This is of course just my point of view, and I'm sure that everyone would have approached this paper differently.
Good Luck for Decemeber!
Tip: Watch the documentry about ERON "the smartest guys in the room"
Posted by: David Mahe | 11 July 2008 at 14:02