Roger Philipp, CPA presents:
HOW TO CONQUER WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Here’s another CPA Exam tip: How to conquer written communication in the BEC Exam. Remember, when they score it, they’re looking are you on topic, is it relevant, and your writing skills: clear, concise, complete, use of standard English, appropriateness for the reader…that’s what they’re grading you on. So, it’s important that, first of all, you use no bullet points, no abbreviations, no charts, no graphs because that’s not what they’re going to be grading on. It is machine graded. That means the machine doesn’t know how to read charts, graphs, abbreviations and so on. So, therefore, make sure it’s complete sentences. You want a clear beginning, a middle and an end. An intro, the body and then finally a conclusion. It’s ok to go ahead and repeat the words in the question because they are looking for things like, hey, changing accounting principle, change in estimate, prospective, retrospective, retroactive and so on. You want to include those keywords in the answer. Remember there are three of these written communications in BEC. You’ve got about 15 minutes to do each one. Of the three, two are graded. One is only pre-tested, and it makes up about 15% of your score. So, that is the approach that I would take for your written communication. Again, clear, concise, complete, use of standard English, make sure your grammar is correct, and that it’s relevant, it is on topic. And that’s my CPA Exam tip.