How to Use your CIMA Study Text the Smart Way

cima study text the smart way

When faced with a big fat CIMA study text lying on our desk the immediate fear is that there’s going to be too much to learn and try to remember.

It’s enough to put off even the most dedicated student from starting.

When we do finally find the willpower to hit the books our worst fears are usually confirmed. There’s theory after theory to read through, key concepts to understand, formulas or models to learn and much more besides

How are we ever going to remember this stuff, especially when it comes to question practice?

I remember these same thoughts going through my head.

It felt like understanding and remembering all the key elements was going to be an impossible task.

But I’m here to tell you today that it’s not impossible.

Whilst it won’t be easy, there is a 5 step strategy that works really well.

Before we dive into the detail though, there’s a couple of important principles for you to consider first:

  1. Understand first, then memorise
  2. Quality of study first, not quantity

Okay so what do I mean by these two statements?

Well, firstly your CIMA exams and the skills you’ll be expected to perform in the work place require you to understand how certain techniques work, why they are used, and in what situations they are best suited to. You don’t need to know every little detail about a theory and remember them all, just the main reasons behind their use.

Secondly, you are far better off tackling one topic at a time and not moving on within the chapter until you truly understand it. It’s far less daunting to do things this way rather than going through the whole chapter all at once and getting overwhelmed by it all. It will also save you time in the long run as you’ll already have a deeper understanding of how a topic works rather than having to keep coming back to it during your revision and exam practice.

Okay, so back to the strategy I mentioned earlier. Here are the 5 steps to go through to maximise the use of your CIMA study text and your time.

1. Preview

Go through the section or topic without reading through the detail. Get an idea as to the outline of what you will be covering such as reading the first few lines of introduction, looking at any subheadings, the layout of any formulas, models or practical examples, and reading the summary or conclusion. This prepares your mind for what you are about to learn and gives the topic an immediate structure in your head.

2. Think

Consider what you have just seen in your outline reading. What do you think the key elements of this topic are? What do the sub headings tell you? What formulas will you have to remember? Which technical models will you have to learn? You basically want to set yourself the challenge of trying to work out what the key aspects of the topic are before you dive into the detailed reading. In the next step you can see if your initial thoughts were right.

3. Active Reading

This is where you read the content in detail and really engage with the material.

You don’t want to skim read the section like you would a newspaper. You want to be active, such as underlying key points like the steps involved or the advantages and disadvantages of a technique, writing comments in the margin of your CIMA study text, asking yourself how you would summarise that sentence or paragraph in your own words and then writing that down. The more active you are, the more you will remember. Whilst this might take longer initially, it really will make life easier in the long run.

NB you can also highlight key words or sentences but I found this didn’t really help me as you end up highlighting pretty much everything!

4. Self Test

Here’s the trickiest but most important step.

Without looking at your CIMA study text or notes, can you remember what the key elements of that section are? For instance, why is a SWOT analysis used when it comes to forming strategy? What were each of the adjustments involved in consolidating group accounts? What were the steps involved in calculating the cost of capital? What were the headings of the CIMA code of ethics? What were the main advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing?

Give yourself permission to get these wrong. It might take some re reading and note taking to get them right, and yes this is going to be frustrating at first. But it’s worth spending the time doing this now otherwise guess what will happen come revision time, exam practice and when you’re sitting in the exam room…

5 Solidify

Before you move on to the next topic or section, or indeed finish for the day, review your notes or CIMA study text again to help things sink in. It will give you confidence if it still makes sense and something you’ve previously overlooked might come to mind which is worth noting down. I also highly recommend you do this read through every other day (perhaps when you have some downtime such as in your lunch break or commuting) to help commit the knowledge to your long term memory. You’ll be much better placed to recall it when you come to tackling questions if you keep up this repetition.

To Sum Up

Yes, applying this 5 step strategy requires hard work up front but you really will reap the benefits later as you’ll be able to recall the vital bits of information needed to answer questions correctly.

I also think it’s a more fun way of hitting the books as you are always challenging your brain rather than tediously reading through long passages of text only to find your mind wandering and wishing you were doing other things.

Give it a try, and let me know how you got on in the comments section below

Of course there are always certain topics that give us problems when it comes to understanding or remembering them. This can stop us dead in our tracks and dent our self confidence.  However, if you sign up for free with your email below, I’ll do my very best to answer your questions and get you moving forward. I’m here to get you results.

Thanks for reading

Matt

P.S. If you’re after a condensed, easy to follow CIMA study text check out what I recommend here.

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