Which study materials are REALLY needed for the CIMA Certificate - help??

[nad12]

Hi all,
I am about to embark on the CIMA Certificate through home-study by funding this myself. I am new to the subject so cannot afford to take any short-cuts. I have seen available to purchase a number of different types of materials as study aid (see below). I would like to know which do I REALLY need to buy and which are not really that helpful please.
1) Study Text
2) Practice & Revision Kit
3) i-Pass
4) Passcards
5) Interactive Passcards

I'm more of a 'watch and learn' type than learn by reading lots of text, however I understand the actual Study Text book will probably the most valuable. Don't particulary want to buy all the different materials, for each exam, if some are not that useful.

Other than purchasing this material from the well-known training providers are there other places (i.e. online sites, cheaper places to buy the material) for the current 2015 syllabus?

Your help will be most valued. Thanks in advance.

 

[cheesyboy]

I did ACCA using BPP materials and courses.

The textbooks were, basically, worthless - I used them a small handful of times to check on particular points, but could have coped without.

However, that was because I had attended either the full study course, or a "kickstart" course where you attend the first day but receive all the course materials (course notes being truncated versions of the textbook). And then went to the revision courses and got the revision notes (revision notes being more-streamlined versions of the course notes).

Mostly, my revision entailed doing past papers and the revision kit's questions.

I don't think BPP sell the course notes outside of the courses any more (I managed to buy them once, but they stopped I think), but if you can find someone who attended the course....

 

[Rids]

The certificate level papers are pretty simple - I did them all using just the official Kaplan study texts. I wouldn't worry about the rest of it.