Planning your study

The quality of your study time matters

Once you have creted your study plan and set your targets you need to think about how you can protect your study time and manage it effectively.

Organising a study session

We'll assume that in your time management plan you’ve set aside three hours for studying. The next step is to plan carefully how to use those three hours – the wrong approach is almost certainly just to open a text book and read for three hours.

Follow these simple guidelines:

Decide which subject or topic area you will cover during the study period
Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses - start with the most difficult or demanding task
Break the three hours into shorter periods
Try three 50 minute periods with two 15 minute breaks in between or four 30 minute periods with three 10 minute breaks in between

Introduce variety into the shorter periods

This will help keep your interest and improve the effectiveness of your studying.

In one session you could read a section of a text book or study manual and make brief notes. In the second section you could work through an example in a text book or CIMA Learning System. In the third session you could work through a past exam question on the topic (available from the Study Resources area)

Build in short review sessions within the three hours

At the start of the second session, review what you’ve studied in the first session. Your review might include writing down a series of keywords or phrases, or remembering a mnemonic (a method for helping you remember) or jotting down the proforma for a calculation or computation.

Techniques for remembering

When you’re in the exam, you’ll need to retrieve from your internal memory what is required to answer a question. So as part of your study time you should build up your powers of recall.

There are various techniques you can use to help you remember what you have learnt - we have listed some of these:

Use plain card and write key words or phrases on them
Write lists that can be stuck on a wall
Create mind maps
Create spider diagrams
Record key information onto tapes