Students and examination success Experienced teachers and lecturers know just as much as we do about this topic. There will, however, be quite a lot of people reading this who are new to teaching, and who have little experience in understanding how the examiner views things. If we have anything to offer, it is simply that we have, between us, been concerned with accounting education for many years and have been examiners for several external examining bodies. The Notes for Students at the start of both Business Accounting 1 and Business Accounting 2 deal with examination techniques. Make certain the students read these. Go through these with them. If we all tell students that what these say is true, then they are more likely to believe us. How students lose marks 1 Lack of knowledge (obviously) but they throw away marks unnecessarily for all of the following reasons: (a) Untidy work, including columns of figures not lined up. (b) Bad handwriting. Do not make it difficult for the examiner to read and mark. (c) Lack of headings, dates, sub-totals, etc. in accounting statements. (d) Not submitting proper workings. You can only get them to rectify everything under this heading by insisting on them correcting (a), (b), (c) and (d) from early on in the course. Do not wait until a few weeks before the examination to insist upon properly laid out and neatly constructed work. 2 Students very often do not follow the rubric on the examination paper. If it asks for two questions only from Section A, then it means just that. A remarkably high percentage do not follow the instructions per the rubric. 3 Students fail to answer the questions as set. If, for example, an examiner wants a list, students will lose marks by giving explanations instead. Students must tackle the question in the prescribed way and not do it differently. The percentage of students passing examinations would rise dramatically if only we could correct this failing. A good plan is to get them to highlight the instruction that shows how the examiner wants the question to be answered, e.g. List the ways by which . . . Describe the ways by which . . . Write a report to the managing director about the ways by which . . . Discuss how the ways by which . . . Explain how the ways by which . . . Then, get them to underline the key words in the rest of the question. They need as much practice as possible in doing this, especially for essay-type questions. Practice is even more essential for students for whom English is not their first language. At the end of this section are 20 essay questions in which we have already highlighted the instruction