Stewart County HS Competitive Event Practice

FBLA Competitive Events Guidelines  FBLA Practice Contests

This insight is offered by a very intuitive FBLA member and competitor

TAKE TIME TO READ THIS! 

FBLA is a gigantic student organization with hundreds of thousands of members nationwide. So how can you get onstage at  Regional Leadership Conference, State Leadership Conferences, advance to Nationals, and place at the top there?

At the 2008 National Leadership Conference, I placed 3rd in Economics, one of the most competitive competitions. And it’s not that hard if you follow a few steps.

The most critical step is to find a competition you enjoy. And I mean enjoy. Realize that you will have to eventually know pretty much everything about a topic.  Realize that some competitions, like Marketing, Accounting, Economics, and math competitions, are going to be hypercompetitive.

The next step is finding a good textbook. You need a textbook in order to do well. Right now, it doesn’t really matter which textbook you use. Hopefully your school will have one for you. Read this textbook and get to know it fairly well.  Make sure you get one with a glossary, and memorize the glossary.

After getting a grip on your subject, you should take a few past Nationals tests. They are also available on the given website. Memorize the questions and answers you miss. The questions come up over and over again on real FBLA tests.

When taking your Section/State tests, try to remember any questions you are unsure on. Once you leave the room, write them down, and look them answers when you get home. Next year if you see these questions again, they’ll be easy, and you’ll place higher.
This “normal” studying will get you placing well at State. I say normal because it’s the same as any testing strategy: read a text book, memorize it, and take tons of practice tests.

The hard part is placing at Nationals, and this is where experience helps. It will help if you know how National FBLA makes the tests. Yes, they “recycle” a few questions, but where do they get the others? They get quite a few of them from textbooks. How do I know? A economics section test happens to ask how much higher union wages are than nonunion wages in the last decade, a rather picky question. When I got home, I discovered the answer was in McConnel Brue’s 16th Edition Economics textbook. By the way, the answer is 15%. Several other questions at all levels suggest that testwriters use this textbook as one source for Economics questions. If you can find the book the writers use, you can place at Nationals. This is easier said than done, but usually there aren’t too many textbooks on a subject. I found an Economics book, and I guarantee there are many more Econ textbooks than for any other FBLA subject.  If you recognise 20% of the questions they recycle, and another 20% of their new questions from your textbook reading, you'll have a giant leg up on your competition.

If you want to place at state, read any textbook and take all of the practice tests. But to place at Nationals, you have to be on top of your topic, read multiple textbooks, and hopefully discover a book that the writers use. It’s like the Holy Grail of FBLA. Good luck in your quest.
 
Thanks to http://www.articlesbase.com/k-12-education-articles/how-to-place-at-fbla-530436.html for this insight!