English to ACCA Students

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants.

The ACCA Qualification is aimed at setting the highest standards for accountancy all over the world. ACCA students and members are finance professionals who are equipped not only with outstanding technical skills but also with an ethical approach to the work they are doing.  This is why the ACCA Qualification is sought after and valued by employers and regulators around the world.

In order to successfully pass the qualification, learners need to have proficiency and skills in Maths and English. The knowledge of English is mainly needed on the level of wordstock, reading comprehension and writing. For the development of the basic skills in terms of English, below we have piled some useful points which give practical guidance for English teachers who are preparing students for the ACCA exams.

1. Market Leader series have a trove of resources which can provide the learners with good financial vocabulary, great series of reading articles, and writing tasks which may come in handy for ACCA students. This website offers also extra resources which can serve as supplementary materials. BEC (Business English Certificate) reading materials are great tools for developing reading comprehension skills and analyzing the information. The same texts can serve as nice resources for writing summaries.
2. “Test Your Professional English — Accounting” provides learners not only with vocabulary knowledge (both theoretical and practical) but also useful exercises which require students’ analytical skills. This book is a great tool for equipping learners with basic financial and accounting terms which will be used throughout all ACCA papers.
3. Financial Times has a wealth of reading articles which trigger readers’ interest and lead to writing tasks in the form of summaries. The teacher may assign the learners to write out key financial words and use them in the summary. This method will help them digest the newly-learned vocabulary and formulate their ideas which are a very useful skill for ACCA learners.
4. As a nice revision for vocabulary items, students may be assigned to work in groups or individually (depends on the case) and make up scenarios which may be actual in everyday accounting in the companies. They can then exchange their scenarios and find solutions to them and present to their peers. In this way, learners will be fully engaged in the lesson and develop their critical thinking which is of utmost importance for ACCA papers.

5. Professional English in Use by Ian MacKenzie is a fantastic resource which is of great help not only for the learners but also for the teacher who may lack some background knowledge in the financial sphere. It has a consistent flow of wordstock development arranged by appropriate units. Over to you sections which are a part of exercises are a nice tool for the learners to develop their speaking skills and implement the active vocabulary in real-life usage.
6. As a reliable source of both theoretical and practical knowledge teachers may use ACCA papers from previous years. Even teachers who are non-financial specialists may use the given materials to the fullest extent. They may help the learners with the clarification of terms and work on their reinforcement. Students, in this case, may take up the role of the teacher in order to explain some formulas to their peers and also to the teacher. It may add some fun to the lesson and help the learners develop skills of formulating their ideas.

Preparing students to ACCA exams is a two-fold work: the teacher may help with techniques and skills of reinforcing the learned material and the students in their turn may assist the teachers by explaining some formulas and clarifying some financial terms.