How I overcame my struggles with the synoptic exam

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Goitsemang Mogogi Motatuki, AATQB, enjoyed completing her synoptic exams, but they weren’t easy at first. Here are her tips for success.

Keen to pursue a career in accountancy with the aim of working for a multinational bank as well as running her own business, Botswana-based Goitsemang Mogogi Motatuki decided to study with AAT via distance learning to help her reach her goals.

“I realised that accounting is at the heart of every business and because I want to run my own business one day, I realised I’d need to know how to read and understand financial statements to see if my business was making a profit or a loss, so accountancy was the obvious choice,” she explains.

Motatuki decided to study with AAT because of its internationally recognised and respected reputation – and having asked several CEOs and CFOs about their career journey, she discovered that most of them had studied with AAT.

Applying learning directly

Two years since she first enrolled with AAT, Motatuki (who is currently working towards her Level 4 Certificate) now works as a key account assistant at the Reddy Group of Companies in Botswana and is a fully qualified bookkeeper (AATQB). Working while studying, she says, means she can apply her learning directly to her job and it makes it easier to understand it all.

But it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Motatuki initially struggled with the theoretical, written aspect of the course, as her strengths lay mainly in numbers and figures. This made examinations and assessments particularly hard, especially when longer essay-style answers were required.

Time pressures

“There was so much information you had to write down and very little time in the exam, so I found it very stressful, particularly with ‘explain’ or ‘discuss’ type questions,” she recalls. “I used to wonder if I had written enough or provided the right information, especially for questions carrying 15 marks or more.”

Motatuki overcame this by practicing as many questions as she could, using past papers and additional material provided by AAT, such as flash cards and Green Light tests.

“AAT’s e-learning material and Green Light tests were the best thing ever for me,” she says. “What I found really helpful was once you’ve completed your answer on the test, you’re shown correct formula so you can learn model answers.”

Pursuing career goals

AAT has given Motatuki the confidence to pursue her career goals and she hopes one day to work abroad. “I would love to relocate and explore different countries,” she says. “My achievements with AAT so far have given me so much more confidence and I am really looking forward to seeing what else I can achieve.”

Key takeaways

  • Identify any weaknesses you may have early on in the course, then you’ll have plenty of time to seek out extra help and support if needed.
  • Make use of all AAT’s e-learning material, it’s extremely user-friendly.
  • AAT flash cards with their short, bitesize notes are ideal for exam preparation, too.
  • Practice theoretical, written answers just as much as formulaic number-based ones as both play a key role in all exams.

The content team are the owners of AAT Comment.

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