This week the Brand Financial Training team present a series of articles for Professional Paraplanner, aimed at helping paraplanners achieve success in their exams. In today”s article, they tackle some of the questions they receive about revision techniques and preparing for exams.
We frequently receive questions from Paraplanners about revision techniques and how to best prepare for CII exams in the year ahead. While preparation strategies can differ depending on the individual and the exam, we’ve decided to kick off the exam Q&A week by sharing our top 10 tips that will be valuable for anyone preparing for their exams in 2025!
2. Tailor Your Revision Approach
Think about what works best for you when revising. Do you study better in a quiet room, library, or café? Would you prefer to focus on mock exams to pinpoint knowledge gaps, or are you more comfortable ploughing through study texts? Adapt your revision approach to suit your style.
2. Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Instead of long, uninterrupted study sessions, aim to study in focused bursts of 20-30 minutes with breaks in between. This will help you maintain concentration and give your brain time to process and consolidate the information.
3. Create Effective Revision Notes
Reading the material is important, but engaging with it actively is even more crucial. Spend time summarising, highlighting, drawing mind maps, using flashcards and rephrasing the material in your own words. This will help solidify the information in your mind.
4. Test Your Knowledge
Testing your knowledge is a key part of any revision plan. Frequently practising mock questions will not only prepare you for the style of questions it will help to identify gaps in your knowledge. You can then adjust your revision accordingly.
5. Use Timed Exams
Simulate exam conditions by completing mock exams with a timer and without distractions. This will give you a real sense of how much time to allocate for each question and prepare you mentally for the exam day.
6. Use Scientific Study Techniques
Active Recall involves testing yourself to actively engage your memory. As you revise, create flashcards, (we are a big fan of creating your own flashcards!). You can then use these, and mock questions, to regularly test yourself. If you can’t recall something, revisit again.
Spaced Repetition goes hand in hand with Active Recall, it involves reviewing material at increasing intervals to help solidify your learning. By reinforcing your memory over time, spaced repetition can help you retain information more effectively than trying to learn everything in one go. It’s particularly useful for CII exams that require you to remember large amounts of information. Reviewing material multiple times over days or weeks, with longer intervals between each review as you become more familiar with the content. For those sections of the study text you know you are struggling with, make a note to review it again and then again if required, or use flashcards to repeatedly commit the detail to memory.
7. Utilise the CII Exam Guides
The CII exam guides are invaluable for understanding the structure of the exams, the type of questions you’ll face, and how to allocate time during the exam. Pay attention to the examiner notes, as they often highlight areas where candidates typically struggle, often giving you an insight into tougher sections of the exam.
8. Study with a Buddy
Studying with others can make revision more interactive and motivating. Explaining topics to others is a great way to reinforce your understanding. You can also learn new techniques and gain fresh perspectives by collaborating with someone else.
9. Ensure you are up to speed with any changes within the syllabus
You should ensure you are aware of any changes to the exam syllabus, these are available on the CII website on the exam homepages under qualification updates. Also make sure you are working from the most up to date tax tables which are available on the CII website:https://www.cii.co.uk/learning/qualifications/assessment-information/before-the-exam/supporting-exam-documents/.
10. Be Cautious with AI
While AI-generated content can sometimes offer helpful insights, it’s not always suitable for CII exams. The material is highly technical and needs to be accurate and up to date, which AI may not always provide. It’s always best to use established resources from reputable exam providers and trusted financial services websites.
About Brand Financial Training
Brand Financial Training provides a variety of immediately accessible free and paid learning resources to help candidates pass their CII exams. Their resource range ensures there is something that suits every style of learning including mock papers, calculation workbooks, videos, audio masterclasses, study notes and more. Visit Brand Financial Training at https://brandft.co.uk
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