Preparing for the coming Dec 2009 T5 Exams

Well for those that got thru the paper in the previous sitting - Congratulations. For those that did not get thru the paper - do not despair. There is still hope.

The previous paper had more "past paper elements" within it, increasing the importance of reviewing the past papers when preparing for the paper. In the past, the questions usually never repeat, but this seems to have changed in the current sitting and the previous sitting.

In the first of the new examination format the examiner had asked the following areas

1 Explain the purpose of business planning and outline the objectives and key decisions relevant to the three levels of planning within an organisation.
(14 marks)
This is a past paper question from Chapter 3 of the BPP text, planning chapter was questioned in Dec 2008 and then repeated in the June 2009 again, indicating that the examiner is aware of the previous style of studying - not covering areas that have come out already. This makes spotting the paper harder, since the examiner has added the elements of uncertainty in the paper sitting.


2 Explain the differences between internal and external audit.
(14 marks)
This is also another past paper, those that had done the T8 paper together with the T5 paper would have had it easier to recall the difference here. High score was possible in this question. The question comes from Chapter 5 of BPP

3 Explain the five functions of management identified by Henri Fayol.
(14 marks)
The functions of Fayol was examined in the earlier papers, repeat question from the past. This question comes from Chapter 9 of BPP, which is a favoured chapter.


4 Conflict often arises between individuals and teams within organisations. Outline four potential sources of conflict and explain the circumstances in which this might become destructive. (14 marks)
This is a new question, but one that could be answerable with common sense and practical knowledge. The question comes from Chapter 14 - Communication chapter which is another favoured chapter

5 (a) Outline the role and responsibilities of both senior managers and first line supervisors in promoting health and safety in the workplace. (14 marks)
(b) List six things that individual employees should do in order to contribute to and promote a healthy, safe and secure work environment. (6 marks)
(20 marks)

The examiners seems to be very keen in the health area and so far ignored the security aspect of the paper for a very very long time, the question is actually one that could be done using common sense and good knowledge of chapter 17 of the BPP text.

Questions for T5 CAT seems to be repeating from the 2006,5 & 4 time zone. This might indicate that
1. Examiner is helping students out
2. Examiner may have exhausted the areas examined.

I would recommend the following approach for the coming sitting
1. Cover the whole syllabus generally, having a broad set of knowledge on each area.
2. Use the recommended textbook - BPP and KAPLAN for preparing for this paper, I prefer BPP
3.Read the text atleast 2 times generally, additional emphasis can be placed on the following chapters
Chapter 15 & 16 of BPP
Chapter 10 & 11 of BPP
Chapter 6 & 7 of BPP
Chapter 1 & 2 of BPP
4. Cover all the T5 past papers in detail, especially those that have yet to be repeated.
5. DO NOT ASSUME THAT IF A CHAPTER IS EXAMINED IN WITHIN THE LAST 2 YEAR, it cannot be examined.

Focus on obtaining a memory of items needed, application to the questions by trying out the question and do WHAT IF SCENARIOS with the text area

Mr.Jay FCCA Lecturer

Possible for T5 in coming June 2009 Exams

The following are the areas that should be likely to come out in the coming June 2009 Exams

Question 1 from Part A
Question should be drawn from organisation structure area - most likely advantage and disadvantage of given structures
Corporate governance requirements for Cadbury
Organisation differences
Organic and Mechanistic
Max Weber and SHIPRUST
Accounting department functional responsibilities
Accounting department and external influences

Question 2 from part B
Fraud chapter with the following being high chance
- Responsibilities for fraud
- 3 main requirements for fraud
- Risk of fraud occurring in computerized system
Internal controls chapter
- Internal auditor independence and scope of work
- Type of internal audit
- Internal controls for specific area - wages system

Question 3
- Most likely from chapter 10 (individual and groups), Name should be examined here
- Woodcock on team building
- Mintzberg on structure
- Vroom
- Ashridge Management school styles of management
- Likert on style
- Janis on group think
- (group behaviour - 3 variables)
- Peters and Waterman on culture and success
- Discipline

Question 4
- Most likely from the chapter 15 - appraisal or chapter 16 training
Cover the following in detail before going in
- On and off the job training -methods + advantage and disadvantage
- Measuring success of training - individual and organisation view point
- Reason for appraisal
- Effectiveness of appraisal
- Types of appraisal - 360, upwards, so on
- Conflict management
- Effective feedback

Question 5
Should be from the security chapter
Responsibilities for security
Password guidelines

The rest just cover the past year papers, since some of the questions are likely to be repeated especially for question 5 zone

Best of luck in the exams

Why so last - minute - so that you should have covered all the areas first before focusing on some areas. The format requires you to have the ability to answer all chapter unlike previous exams.

Techniques to pass T5 CAT

Do we have bad memory? This is one of the major excuses given by the students when they say they cannot study....some even say that they cannot memorize anything.....that is just an excuse made up so that they can escape studying.

The truth is most have yet to try memorizing correctly.....just like exercising to loose weight. I would like to loose some weight, but most of the exercise that I should do, just feels too hard, so I never get down to doing it.....lack of motivation.

Most students that say they can't memorize, is the same excuse as some one saying they can't exercise - lazy.

Most of us have a really good memory, but we just don't have practice in using it efficiently. If the above is true, then why is it so hard for me to remember things?

Our memory works by association. If there is no obvious association between things, it's very difficult to remember them. For example, suppose you needed to remember that your plane takes off at 2 P.M. There is nothing about the plane that would suggest the number 2 more than it would any other number (at least at first glance). Therefore, 2 is easily forgotten.

Likewise, how does your best friend relate to his phone number, an arbitrary string of digits?

Simple. If memory works by association, we actively work to create an association between two bits of information. For example, for the plane that we need to catch at 2 P.M., we can imagine the plane in our mind, and notice that it has 2 wings. Two wings, 2 P.M. There's an association. We are now ten times more likely to remember the take-off time long after it has faded from our short-term memory.

The next issue for most students is the poor ability to plan any time for studying, most trying to do the work at the last minute.

This is not very practical for this paper.

Planning to study, you should understand the natural weekly cycle that most of us go thru.

Mondays every time is the same, with some adjustments
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursday, Friday are usually the same.

It is Saturday and Sunday that changes.

Your planning should be based around your current time usage, then look for time available for studying and reviewing. This does not need to be 1 hour slots, or 30 minute slots, just 5 minutes to 10 minutes here and there should be significant if it is done daily.

Compare the following students

Student A allocates 1 hour of study every day for 7 days - a single slot

Student B allocates 8 slots of 5 minutes everyday (here and there in the day) = 40 minutes

Which one might have a better study effect?

Student B

Reasons:
1. Desperation makes the brain work faster and more efficiently, whereas student A would likely study in a slower and more relax manner therefore taking a longer time
2. Short burst of information are more easily retained compared to long burst
3. Since it is spliced with the daily affairs, it might be more "focused" to get the most out of the time

So.....based on this, any time you get to STUDY, REVIEW the NOTES, READ a LIST, RECALL a few names & what they said is a good effort.

Start now, 8 - 5 minutes slot and spread it to few subjects (make a list of items first)

Now this is still better than STUDENT C (typical Malaysian student)

Study 6 hours everyday for 4 days just before the exam, and the last day of the exam study 8-12 hours.
Total time studied = 32 - 36 hours.

Results will depend on LUCK.

Mr.Jay FCCA Lecturer

Latest updates for T5

It has been some time since I had last posted anything about the T5, busy with work and loads of teaching......now I am taking care of the P1, P3, P5, F8 as well as T8 subjects. That is quite a heavy load. I have stayed with my strong points - Theory teaching, with some review of numbers (P3 and P5). Now back to the issue at hand, for those taking the T5 for the JUNE 2009 sitting, what can I say.

There is some changes in the T5 paper that you should be aware of.

1. The first 4 parts (A - D) will be examined by objective 6 marks and subjective 14 marks
2. The final part E is still a 20 marks question

In the coming examination, it would be necessary for you to have the following to handle the paper.

In the past, you could get away with just focusing in some parts of the text book and hoping for it to full come out, now this would be harder to do.

I would be more focused on covering the whole text briefly in some manner - using a list to recall the key points in each area and then trying to reduce the work load a bit more.

In my view, I would do a maximum full coverage of the part E (this does not gurantee that you will get 20 marks, but should be able to get some - examiner has been known to ask slightly different questions that test overview knowledge rather than just pure memory) - I suspect this time should be a security question, since it has already been some time this has been examined. Most likely a question on data security should be coming out (passwords, user profile)....there are many other security area (repeat from 2004 - 2006 papers are very possible here)

The other parts that you should consider it a more balanced approach. The following is the sample of the T5 objective questions that was prepared by Dr.Beverly Lee, this indicates the level of depth that is required to clear this paper. As you can see that certain chapters have been hit higher than other, this indicates that in the final exam, it might be that the objective questions will hit an area which is not questioned in the 14 marker.

For now, you should do a broad coverage and get a full view of the topics, do not try to "spot too much"


1 Which of the following is an acronym used to describe the key elements of an organisation’s external environment? - Chapter 1 BPP
A PERT
B PEST
C SWOT
D SPAM (2 marks)
2 Henry Mintzberg categorised five basic components of an organisation.
Which TWO the following statements describes the work of the technostructure of an organisation? - Chapter 2 BPP
1 Designing systems
2 Organising and controlling work
3 Standardising work
4 Securing inputs
A 1 and 2
B 1 and 3
C 2 and 3
D 3 and 4 (2 marks)

3 Which of the following is a correct definition of the term ‘span of control’? - Chapter 2 BPP
A The number of employees reporting to one manager
B The number of managers to whom one employee reports
C The number of levels in the hierarchy
D The number of employees at each level of the organisation (2 marks)

Syllabus section 2
Effective management of business and accounting systems
4 T o whom is the internal auditor accountable? - Chapter 5 BPP
A The directors of the company
B The employees of the company
C The shareholders of the company
D The external auditors of the company (2 marks)

5 SPAMSOAP is a mnemonic for the types of internal control employed by an organisation.
Which TWO of the following are types of internal control included in SPAMSOAP? - Chapter 5 BPP
1 Output
2 Arithmetic
3 Preventative
4 Physical
A 1 and 2
B 1 and 3
C 2 and 3
D 2 and 4 (2 marks)

6 Which of the following are typical responsibilities of the financial accountant in a large organisation? - Chapter 4 BPP (I believe that this question has been wrongly been classified into Section B)
1 Inventory valuation
2 Sales invoicing
3 Project appraisal
4 Payroll
A 1 and 2
B 2 and 4
C 1 and 4
D 3 and 4 (2 marks)

Syllabus section 3
Management theory, principles and techniques

7 Who was responsible for developing the ‘Situational Leadership’ model? - Chapter 9 BPP (Favourite area)
A Blake and Mouton
B Katz and Kahn
C Hersey and Blanchard
D Tannenbaum and Schmidt (2 marks)

8 Which of the following statements accurately describes a multi-disciplinary team? - Chapter 11
A All team members collaboratively decide how to organise their work
B All team members have different skills and specialisms which they pool
C All team members can perform any and all of the group’s tasks
D All team members are jointly responsible for the leadership of the team (2 marks)


9 Which TWO of the following are examples of content theories of motivation? - Chapter 12
1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
2 Vroom’s expectancy theory
3 Herzberg’s two factor theory
4 Adam’s equity theory
A 1 and 2
B 2 and 4
C 3 and 3
D 1 and 3 (2 marks)

Syllabus section 4
Individual effectiveness at work

10 Which TWO of the following are examples of ‘on the job’ training - Chapter 16
1 Formal training courses
2 Mentoring by a colleague
3 Self study courses
4 Secondments to other departments
A 1 and 2
B 2 and 3
C 3 and 4
D 2 and 4 (2 marks)

11 If a manager in the purchasing department requests the help of the Human Resources Director in preparing for a difficult appraisal, what direction is the communication flow? Chapter 15
A Vertical
B Horizontal
C Lateral
D Diagonal (2 marks)

12 Honey and Mumford classified four different learning styles.
Which of the following statements accurately describes the reflector? - Chapter 16
A Prefers to understand principles
B Prefers to think things through first
C Prefers to try things ‘hands on’
D Prefers to see practical examples (2 marks)
End of Sample Questions

Answers
Sample Multiple Choice Question Paper T5 Answers
Managing People and Systems
1 B
2 B
3 A
4 A
5 D
6 B
7 C
8 B
9 D
10 D
11 D
12 B

Tips for those doing ACCA OBU project

When you are starting down the path of research, here are few pointers that you should consider.

1. For the topic that you have selected - do some initial research by finding some nice articles and journals to support the area. DO NOT START WRITING UP THE RESEARCH until this point. Especially for the organisation and industry that you are doing. The RULE is, what ever you are researching, you are not the first to do so, many had done it before, therefore there must be tons of research out there to support the findings - get a few to obtain an initial feel for the area.

2. The consider the approach that you will be taking for the research, some like the case study, primary, secondary, quantitative or qualitative approach. If you are doing research that requires the use of primary methods of data gathering - make sure the access of the data is not going to be a problem - that is the last thing you need if you are doing research - NO ACCESS to SUBJECTS.

3. Do select organisations that are interesting, THOSE that are doing TOPIC 8, there is not only the MALAYSIAN companies, any company that publishes the financial statement may be used, like FORD MOTORS, COKE COLA, DISNEY, STARBUCKS. Try to analyse companies that are interesting and exciting, one that will bring the readers into - "OH YES, THIS SHOULD BE GOOD"

4. Do NOT look too much at others research on the same topic, OR other mentors approach to the topic. Each mentor will have their own style for mentoring and review, it should not be the basis for evaluating your project.


Overall the most important aspect for the research is your desire to learn or your desire to just get a cert.

Hopefully it is DESIRE TO LEARN a NEW SKILL - ability to research with some guidance.

Mr.J.Sathiyaseelan FCCA(UK) Pg.Dip Marketing(UK) ACB (US)

OBU Mentoring Services

For those students that are interested in getting their OBU degree, you can contact Boston Consulting & Training - email bostontrainers@gmail .com for more information regarding the packages.

Battle advice for adventurers of T5 realm

Very soon the dreaded paper will be upon you. You might breakdown in fear or you might conquer the paper.

Defeating the paper requires a lot more than an ability to write, you must master the aspects of the text that examiner wants to hit you with.

Here is the balance of the TIPS for T5

The other areas that are important

For Part C or Question 3 (The name question)

Chapter 9 is the most favoured chapter for Dr.Beverly Lee, which makes it a candidate all the time for revision.

In this case I would pay attention to Charles Handy leadership styles, Ashridge advantages and disadvantages, Likert, Mintzberg on the roles of managers.

Would also pay attention delegation since it is usually tested. Go thru the past year paper on that one, since it was examined before.

Chapter 10

This is the most likely candidate this semester

You should probably focus on the following items

Perception

Personality

Group behaviour - defined

Group behaviour vs crowd

Why people go into groups

What is groups useful for

Trompenaar definition of culture

Peters and Waterman cultural excellence

Chapter 11

Is about team management, possibility is there.

Should consider the following:

- Team rewards

- Woodcock on teams

- Team building - identity, shared goals and cohesion

- Team uses

Chapter 12

This is a name chapter that your examiner would love

In this chapter it would be wise to know the following in detail

Herzberg - everything he said and mention

Vroom & JS Adam

Discipline

Charles Handy again - E theory

Methods of motivating the staff - pay, culture, style and job design

William Ouchi Theory Z

McGregor Theory X and Y

That would be the closure for Part C.

End of the day, you should be stronger in Chapter 10 and 12

The next area is Part D or Question 4

Chapter 13 - Time management and work roles

This chapter just came out last semester

Focus on Priority setting, resources management and work organisation which includes the work allocation, scheduling

Chapter 14 - Examiners favourite chapter - High chances of pulling something out here

This chapter is just too large, its like the Sahara desert and looking for water here is difficult.

The most that I can say about the Chapter - focus on assertive behaviour, counselling, advantages and disadvantages of communication (verbal and written)

Chapter 15

The chapter about Appraisal seems to be the likely candidate this semester, with MIA for some time already. The area has a lot of items that have yet to be tested

I would focus on purpose of appraisal and reason for requirement. I would also look at methods of evaluating the appraisal effectiveness.

Methods of appraisal can be considered in some level of depth.

Importance of feedback is very critical

Chapter 16

Is about the training and development chapter. In this case you will need to cover the different methods of training and its ADV and DISADV.

Methods of evaluating the training effectiveness

How to do a training needs analysis

Right that ends all the areas for part D

What about part E, well it should be something in the security chapter for sure, but there is a chance that the examiner decides to ask an old question from the past.

Run thru all the past year papers for this area, especially the older ones June 04 - Dec 05

Responsibilities of management for security and your own responsibility is important

Security devices should be considered.

Health and safety - emergency procedures, fire, alternative legislations are possible

That is the end of the tips from me.

To those that are not my students - if you passed because of this - have the courtesy to leave a comment behind.

WARNING: SURGEON GENERAL SAYS THAT TIPS ARE BAD FOR EXAM HEALTH. A FULL COURSE OF STUDY IS ALWAYS RECOMMENDED WITH A BALANCE APPROACH IN DEALING WITH QUESTIONS

This semester is the last T5 class

The T5 classes for me this semester, G14 is the last of the T5 groups. After this onwards the site will be useful for all students since I will be providing support for any one in the world that has problem with this dreaded paper.

Starters will be my spots for the coming T5 examination

Approach for the coming examination - do not study a single chapter in each area. Go for wider coverage.

December 2005 and backwards are important for Section E since the examiner has already examined most of the part and a repeat question is very possible.

For now my suggestion for focus studying is using the BPP text book as a basis and review the following areas deeper

Chapter 1 - came out last sitting, just cover the corporate governance and organisation differences

Chapter 2 - looks like the most promising of the lot, Organisation structure - cover the centralisation and decentralisation, span of control, wide and narrow, functional and product form. Bureuacracy, Mechanistic and Organic, Informal and formal, Mintzberg

Chapter 3 - planning did come out before, focus on co-ordination and contingencies, what can go wrong in planning. Stay more alert about the ending of chapter 3 which is red hot this semester

Chapter 4 - most items have been examined except for accounting structure -look into it.

That ends the review for Part A or Question 1

Now Question 2

Chapter 5 - focus on internal checks and internal auditor

Chapter 6 - All areas need to be covered

Chapter 7 - Focus on output of purchases system and controls for wages

Chapter 8 - Information system, cover the diagram for the flow and MIS definition

End of Q 2 review the rest will follow