Use of Maclaurin series for single maths

For questions in single maths such as "find the binomial expansion of ...", are you allowed to use Maclaurin series instead of binomial expansion?

Have you an example? The binomial series can be regarded as a particular case of a maclaurin series, but is usually given rather than derived. So using calculus/maclaurin to derive the binomial series would work, but youre deriving something thats given to you in the formula book?

E.g. for finding the first three terms of the binomial expansion of 1 / sqrt(4+x), would it not be easier just to find the derivatives at zero and use Maclaurin expansion? In any case, would I receive any marks for doing it this way?