Leaving Cert Business is a modern real-world subject. It the most popular business subject and is widely regarded as the easier of the three, but with only 3.8% of candidates attaining an A1 grade in the 2016 exam, it’s clear there are numerous pitfalls! Luke Saunders from Studyclix.ie has five tips that can help you boost your grade for the exam.

Know your timing

The business exam is one of the most pressurised exams for timing. Every year people don’t finish a question or have to rush through their final answer . This can mean losing marks that could be the difference in a grade.

Breaking down the exam, you should be spending just under 25 minutes on each long question and 40 minutes on the Applied Business Question. Using bullets points can help make your answers more concise, but there’s no substitute for having answered full questions under exam timing, so make sure to be wary of this.

It’s as easy as ABQ

The Applied Business Question (ABQ) is worth a whopping 80 marks, but is consistently where students fail to get marks they could otherwise have gained easily. For the 2017 exam, the ABQ is based around units four, five and six. This means you should have an in-depth knowledge of these units of the business course in particular.

Studyclix.ie has all of the previous ABQs for these units and their marking schemes on one page, so it’s definitely worth checking out and being familiar with what’s expected of you.

Know the marking scheme: Business is a subject where knowing what examiners are looking for will stand to you. Often times, there is an extra step, example or point necessary in the longer questions to get full marks. By answering exam questions, checking the marking scheme and correcting your answer using a site like Studyclix, you’ll have a good idea what your examiner wants from you and will be best able to get full marks come exam day.

Nail the short questions

The short questions in business are often overlooked when it comes to revision, however they can be a great way of upping your grade. With relatively little room for error, it’s really important that you practice these and know your abbreviations, formulas, and definitions. Putting time into practising these short question and crucially checking your answers means that you maximise your chances of getting a high mark early on in your exam.

Have Examples

Being familiar with a number of businesses and case studies can make providing links and examples in your answers a whole lot easier.

Simple things like reading the business section of a newspaper or watching the news in the weeks before exams means you’ll be able to apply what you know about the business course to real-life companies. If you can provide a real-world example in your answers, it can very often boost your mark as well as showing that you really know your stuff.