CBE NOTES SBL PRACTICE PDF

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Download CBE NOTES SBL PRACTICE PDF

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 A Student’s guide to ACCA Strategic Professional CBEs ACCA are gradually moving the strategic professional exams from paper based to computer based, starting in March 2020. For details of when your exam centre will be affected please click here

Practice makes perfect To simulate the exam make sure you attempt as many questions as possible using the software. Familiarise yourself with the functionality of the CBE system. The ACCA have put a number of specimen exams and past exam questions into their ‘practice platform’ which you will be able to access via MyACCA. You will also have assessments during your course in Kaplan’s version of the exam software to help you practice your layout and technique. While we have endeavoured to recreate the real software as closely as possible there are a few minor differences between the version in MyKaplan and the version you will see on the exam day, which have been explained in the Appendix.

How you should use the CBE software Click on your subject from the list below for ACCA videos introducing the CBE instructions and timings as well as how to plan and complete your exam (you’re looking for the icons similar to the picture underneath): SBR APM

SBL ATX

AFM AAA

Please be aware these videos contain suggested techniques from the ACCA examining teams for each subject, but these are only suggestions. The techniques can be adapted to suit your style and ability, so the key is to practice as many questions as possible and develop a plan that works for you. This PDF guidance document from ACCA offers all the details explained in the videos in one place as well as some useful formulae that can be used in the spreadsheet response for some of the more numerical subjects. The SBL specific guidance document can be found h  ere.

Time Management on Exam Day On the exam day, you will be provided with some paper to do workings on. There is also a scratch pad in the software for similar purposes. This will not be submitted with your answer, so it is advised wherever possible to show all workings in the word processor and spreadsheet responses in the software so that the markers can award as many marks as possible to your answers. You may instead wish to use the scratch pad or rough paper to note down the timings of your questions so that you don’t run out of time on the last questions.

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Appendix - differences between ACCA and Kaplan exam software Toolbars in the main Workspace  The toolbar in the main workspace looks slightly different as demonstrated below: Kaplan software:

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  Live exam: At the top of the screen

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Functionality of Symbol and Highlighter  Kaplan’s software can only highlight in the main workspace window and in one colour. The symbol tool is located within the word processing and slide response windows and has these options:

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 The live exam allows a choice of highlighting colours across all documents in the exam and the symbol tool is in the top toolbar in the main window and has only the following options:

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Other differences in the response windows  The Kaplan word processor and slides have the strikethrough and super/subscript in a ‘format’ drop down menu:

 Live exam:

  Kaplan software: The rounding/percentage/thousands comma formatting is in a separate drop down menu:

 Live exam:

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The remaining differences are also present between ACCA’s practice platform and the live exam software…

PDF exhibits toolbar  Please be aware that PDF exhibits look and behave slightly differently in the Kaplan software and the live exams. Kaplan Software:

Live exam: vs

Highlighting Text in a PDF exhibit  Currently Kaplan software doesn’t allow you to highlight or strikethrough information in PDF exhibits. If you want to practice this, it is advised that you download the PDF exhibit and open it as a separate document, then you can highlight etc In the live exam you will be able to highlight and strikethrough as follows: 1) Switch from ‘Move Tool’ to ‘Text Tool’ in order to be able to select text. This is illustrated below:

2) Once the Text Tool is selected in the live exam, you will be able to select text in the PDF exhibit and highlight or strikethrough. Also note in the toolbars above, there is a magnifying glass icon, which is a find tool to search the PDF for specific words or phrases. Again this is only possible in the Kaplan PDFs if you download them and open them as a separate PDF document.

 Display of Selected Text in a PDF exhibit In the Kaplan software, once you have selected some text it will have highlighting/shading applied to it:

In the live exam, selected text is greyed out:

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