Preparation Tips For Class 12 Business Studies:
Business Studies is a subject all fun and games till you reach the point of giving an exam. Most students of class 12 are petrified of the idea of having to remember the plethora of concepts and numerous points therein. This is a misconception that is blindly agreed upon. The reality though, is much different and better than expected. In simple terms, Business Studies’ examination tests your conceptual understanding of businesses and all their respective aspects. Keep in mind that this article does not answer ‘what to study’ but instead ‘how to study’, when it comes to Business Studies. Paving your way through this should be easy and fruitful if the tips and tricks suggested below are used in the right manner. In this article, find some preparation tips for Class 12 Business Studies.
Pre-Exam Preparation tips for class 12 business studies:
- Clear Your Concepts: The first step to preparation is reading all the topics well once and clearing all doubts that you may have with regards to the meanings or interpretation of the chapters’ content.
- Focus on Keywords: While reading through the subject, ensure that you underline or highlight the keywords and jargons used to explain the topics. These essentially are your tickets to scoring phenomenally well since they point you the fact that you are well read and well prepared.
- Use Flash Cards: This is a tip that can work wonders with your preparations if abided by religiously. While going through your topics, note down all the points (and the keywords associated) pertaining to each chapter on a flash card (You may even use normal notepad papers in the absence of flash cards). These flash cards can then be carried around and revised in any free time or gaps that you find in your routine activities. This will help with regular revision, without having to read the entire chapter and also with remembering the points and accurately associating them with respective topics.
- Examples: Every subject, when connected with examples from real world scenario becomes much easier to understand. Speak to your tutors and do some research yourself, to find out appropriate examples for each business concept. This trick provides you with an added advantage and an edge over the others, thus making your answer appear more realistic and worthy of practical application.
- Flowcharts: By now, it is evident that the key to preparing for Business Studies lies in organizing your preparation in such a manner that all that’s left for you to do prior to the examination is glance through a few pages and cards. When a concept is explained in an extremely detailed manner, it is natural for one to lose connect and forget the previous links. Hence, map your understanding into mind-maps or flowcharts using simple words to easily connect the dots.
- Acronyms: As there may be multiple points to remember, it is advised to think of some mnemonics / acronyms. These will help you to recall all the points of a question in a serial order. (Example: POSDC (Planning, organising, staffing, directing, controlling.))
- Revise Smartly: Say you read one chapter each day. It is highly possible that upon reading the next chapter, you tend to forget what you read in the previous one. The solution to this is, glance through your flash cards and flow charts that you made while preparing for the previous chapters, before proceeding to read the next one in detail and repeat this exercise with each chapter. That is, revise Chapter 1 before you start Chapter 2, Chapters 1 and 2 before Chapter 3, and so on.
- Focus on Case Studies: CBSE is known for asking questions that require you to put your higher order thinking skills to use. This is done by attaching the aspect of practical application to the questions, in the form of case studies. These questions are what sift the high scorers apart from the others. Hence, one must learn to understand the concepts taught in a practical sense and decipher which concepts the given case study attempts to hint at.
- Previous Year Question Papers: Though this step is a no brainer in the eyes of most students now, it still remains to be the most important tip to scoring in the class 12 exam. Practicing old papers help because they give one an idea about the paper pattern, the time pressure to be worked under, the marking scheme and the expectations from the answers that one must write. The only way to write perfect answers is to practice and figure out what flow works best for each type of question. Get these answers checked with your tutors to get better insights into what areas must you improve to better them. Find a few papers here!
How to Write Your Exam Paper:
- Scan Well: The reading time of 15 minutes provided before attempting a paper are the most crucial 15 minutes of your attempt at scoring well. Scan the paper well for the length of the paper and the type of questions asked.
- Strategise: Most question papers are devised in such a way that they can categorize the poor performers, average performers and the high scorers apart through the means of difficulty levels of different questions. Pick the questions with greater marks assigned first and solve those which have direct and standard answers (low difficulty level). Next, choose the ones that are moderately difficult and lastly, the difficult ones. This will prevent you from losing out on the ‘cash marks’ questions.
- Time Management: Solving questions in the order mentioned above helps in two ways. One, you get an instant boost of confidence since you secure a certain number of marks effortlessly. Second, since you are well-versed with these questions, you save yourself a huge chunk of time by answering them as quickly as possible. This helps you gift yourself extra time for the difficult ones which require greater analysis and careful attempts.
- Use Pointers: Unless your answer can in no way be categorised and simplified into pointers, prefer not to use long paragraphs. Explain any topic in subhead points and explain these subheads in one or two lines with all the key words associated. Keep your sentences crisp and short. This trick works phenomenally well as it saves time of both, the examiner and the examinee.
- Diagrams: Anything that makes the job of a reader easier and the content simpler is always well- acclaimed. Use this knowledge to your advantage and make diagrams wherever possible. Be it flowcharts, stick figures, process chains or something else, you decide. But do not make the mistake of wiling away too much time for this. Leave spaces to work on these later (during the extra time left or while rechecking) if need be.
- Recheck: If you follow the strategy mentioned above, you’re most likely to be left with some time (ranging from 15 to 30 minutes, as per your writing speed) for the purpose of rechecking. While doing so, ensure that you highlight all the key words, heads and subheads with a pencil to facilitate the examiner’s correction which ultimately gives you brownie points and more marks.
Moral of the story: Business Studies can be your cash crop if you learn how to plant and harvest in the right manner.
ALL THE BEST!
