Developing Exam Skills - Better use of the case study

The case study at the front of your exam paper. A gift.Here, the principal examiner has written you a nice story (or in the case of BUSS2, two nice stories) on a business. Not only that, the story has all the information you need to apply your answers. Yet, many students look this gift horse in the mouth.Possibly the worst thing that any student can do is underline everysingle line in the case study and then NEVER refer back to it. So why do so many students adopt this strategy?Here are two strategies to improve your use of the case study which will hopefull lead to better application and therefore higher marks.Firstly, application can only be given if it used to support an argument. Lines copied out of the case study or the name of the business shoe horned into your answer is NOT application. Now we have that out of the way, lets look at two belting case study strategies:SWKWhen I was presenting on the recent BUSS2 exam coaching days, I saw the amazing Joe from Greenhead using an amazing technique to get the students looking more critically at the case study. SWK is a further adaption of his idea.Rather than underlining everything in the case study, simply annotate certain sections with S, W or K. S for a strength of the business/ product/ serviceW for a weakness of the business/ product/ serviceK for a key point that is neither a strength or a weakness By focusing on these 3 key areas you will give yourself a much better chance of picking up the key issues facing the business allowing you to apply in much more detail The line numbersOn the right hand side of the case study are what is known as line numbers (5, 10, 15, 20 etc)Another useful strategy is to read some of the longer mark questions first. Then, as you read the case study, if there is some information relating to the question, note down the line number next to that question. Then, as you to start to complete the paper, when you get to the questions, there will already be the line numbers written down which will allow you to refer back quickly to the part in the case study where the information is contained. Again, this will help you to apply in more detail