An important part of your preparation for writing the regulatory examinations concerns your mental approach. I came across an interview in Moneyweb with Paddy Upton, who plays an important role in the preparation of our very successful national cricket side. His thinking applies equally to those facing the challenge of writing the regulatory examinations:
Mental conditioning is a label someone gave the thing that I do. I’m not quite sure whether it is that, but to get anybody, sport or outside of sport into the best possible space, there are a couple of things that are really important, like preparation. There’s no differentiation – we’ve been through exams before. If you’ve studied the whole book, you go in with a very comfortable, confident, clear mind-set. If you’ve cut corners, you go in with less confidence. So in order to be mentally strong or conditioned, you need to prepare properly, you need to understand your own game really well, you need to understand your strengths really well and be able to play to those strengths.
The basic approach consists of two elements: you need to understand what you have to know, and you need to prepare for the actual exam paper.
The questions were developed using the qualifying criteria and the applicable legislation. While using plain language study material is very important to assist you to understand what you are required to know, you also need exposure to the legal documents, which are often written in a far more former style.
If you use both in preparing for the regulatory examinations, you not only increase your chances of passing – you actually acquire the knowledge to put into practice what you have learnt.
Leonardo da Vinci added a further spin to this: Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Preparation Material
There are three updated resources for those requiring access to the legislation applicable to the regulatory examinations:
- Inseta published updated versions of their study material on their website
- LexisNexis provides a “Legislation Handbook” together with a “Preparation Guide” containing the qualifying criteria, with a link to the relevant legislation. Queries can be addressed to Nerine.
- The Juta FAIS Pocket Statutes also contains a CD with a comprehensive list of updated supplementary legislative material for reference purposes.
RE Schedules, Venues and Registration visit our exam page.
