As an NCA student, preparing for the exams becomes extremely crucial for you. The NCA exam is significant to ensure that you can practice a career in law in Canada. Just like any other important test, this one also requires a lot of careful preparation and planning.
There are many challenges that students face while writing this exam and here are a few essential tips that one can use to do well in the NCA foundations of the Canadian Law Exam.
Table of Contents
Understand the Concept
One of the toughest challenges that students face while writing this test is that they are unclear about the key objectives of the syllabus. Understanding concepts becomes very important in this scenario as it allows you to easily identify the questions in the exam and come up with appropriate answers.
If you fail to grasp the concepts of your syllabus, chances are that you will neither be able to understand the questions in the exam nor come up with possible answers that are appropriately presented.
Make use of the ‘open Book’
Now NCA is an open-book exam which means questions are not going to be direct. This is precisely why it’s better to understand the concepts of the syllabus rather than memorize things
Also, given that the exams are open book, it’s necessary to extract all the valuable information from the book and make useful ‘cheat notes’ that can serve as references rather than taking the entire textbook with you. Going through the entire book in a limited time will not be ideal, instead, it’s better to have precise notes that can be easily accessed and are extremely useful.
Practicing
Practicing is the key to acing your exam and the same formula applies to the NCA exams. To be able to perform well in these exams, you must practice your questions and prepare beforehand. This will help you come up with relevant answers during the exam and allow you to understand your syllabus better.
Also, practicing questions will allow you to create a good template for your cheat sheet given this is an open-book exam.
Never Memorize
One of the common challenges that students face with their NCA exam is that they are often focused on memorizing every bit of information. Retaining all the key elements of the syllabus is not easy and is an impractical way of preparing. Also, considering it’s an open-book exam, your familiarity with the concepts is more important than anything else and that is a skill that you will have to bring into use to write good answers.
Don’t Get Caught In The Smaller Details
The NCA syllabus is heavy with concepts and it will be unwise to skip something during revision. You have to be careful about grasping everything but the idea is to stick to the main argument and conclusion rather than going into unnecessary details and attempting to retain even the smallest piece of information.
These are some of the common factors that every student preparing for the NCA exam must keep in mind. By covering these essential facets, every student will be able to overcome any challenges that occur while writing the NCA foundation test.