How to successfully study ACCA part time

If you’re on your way to getting an ACCA qualification, you might find it hard to juggle work or life commitments alongside your studies. Perhaps you’re just looking for advice and tips on how best to structure your learning schedule.

Well you’ve come to the right place. As distance learning experts, we know it’s not always easy. Keep reading for our advice on studying an ACCA part time course.

How many hours should I study for ACCA?

When you’re studying ACCA we recommend you plan to do a minimum of 8 hours per week. Study time varies in terms of how long it will take you to cover the syllabus, but you can expect to spend about 11 weeks on each paper.

The beauty of learning with Eagle is that you can take it at your own pace – you’re not tied in to a contract so you just pay for the course materials for as long as you’re using them.

How can I study ACCA while working?

One of the most popular ways is to enrol on a distance learning course. As the name suggests, you complete the course content away from a classroom, usually online.

This kind of studying is perfect if you don’t have a lot of free time, can’t commit to attending a class regularly, or you can’t easily access a classroom location. It means you can study wherever and whenever suits you. This could be anywhere from 2 hours every night or an 8 hour day on Sundays, all from your own home – you have the opportunity to be totally flexible.

Make studying a habit

According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day¹. Incorporating studying into your routine and making it more of a habit than a chore will be great for helping your progress through ACCA.

Habits work best when you start off small, how about 45 minutes of straight revision? Eventually you’ll be able to work up from minutes to hours of studying. This will be helpful when it comes to revising the whole syllabus, pre-exam time when you might need to put the extra hours in.

And don’t worry – everyone can slip up and get off track. If you do, don’t dwell on the missed time, but try and get back on track as soon as possible. Try not and fall into the trap of the all-or-nothing mentality – we’re all human.

Study when you’re most productive

It’s different for all of us. Not all the early birds catch the worm. Whether you’re an early riser or a night owl, find what time works best for you to study (and fits your schedule).

By focusing your studies during the time you know you’ll take in the most information, you’re taking a great step in optimising your time for learning. There’s no point spending time trying to take in information if you know further down the line you won’t totally remember it.

Ask if you don’t understand

ACCA is open to everyone even with no finance experience, but it’s still a demanding course with a really broad syllabus to learn. When it comes to topics or specific questions that you don’t understand, that’s where Eagle tutors come in. They’re here to help, and as part of your subscription you can ask as many questions as you want.

Practice, practice, practice

Once you feel confident on the syllabus of a paper, the best thing to do is practice being able to answer the questions as clearly as possible.

An Eagle ACCA subscription includes mock papers through our online learning platform Moodle. You’ll also be able to reach out to your tutor if you’d like them to review any questions you get wrong, or to see where you can add some extra points to hit that magic 50.

Look after yourself

You can’t study if you’re sick. Prevention is the best cure to make sure you’re always on top form. Particularly when you’re studying, your health should be a priority to make sure you’re working to your full capacity.

It’s the simple things, like a healthy diet, regular exercise and getting a good sleep that will benefit you and your studies. Feeling inspired to see how else you can improve your health? We’ve written a blog on our top 10 ways for improving wellbeing.

Stay motivated

In most student’s journeys there’ll be a lull at some point – a few days, weeks or months where they might lack that drive to see their ACCA qualification through to the end. It’s at these times that keeping your motivation up is important.

There are some tips and tricks you can use to keep on track when this is the case. Breaking up your work into manageable chunks can help focus and motivate you, so you’re looking at smaller sections as opposed to a huge qualification in one go. Along with this, setting realistic goals will give you more chances to achieve and give yourself a pat on the back.

You can do it

Taking on board some of these tips should help in your ACCA studies, but as an Eagle student, if you need any more help, feel free to reach out to your tutor for support.

And if you want to learn more about how Eagle can help you get ACCA qualified, find out more here.

¹ Habits: A Repeat Performance by David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn