Top Tips for English Composition 1 — A Student’s Inside Perspective

A very challenging and rewarding course.

👋 Welcome to My Experience in ENGL 0101!

Now that I’m in my final week of English Composition 1 at University of the People, I would like to share with you my top tips for this experience that enriched me as a person and as a student. My writing has improved tremendously, and I learned so much about English grammar and punctuation. Let’s begin! 😃 👍

✔️ Start Working Early in the Week and Meet Due Dates

You should start working on your assignments very early in the learning week. New content is released every Thursday and you have until next Wednesday to submit your assignments (the learning journal is the only assignment due on Thursday).

I usually started my reading assignments on Thursday or Friday. During this course, you will read stories from Oscar Wilde, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, Agatha Christie, Neil Gaiman, and other world-renowned authors. The experience is really awesome, so I recommend starting to work very early in the week to enjoy the process of reading these masterpieces without having to rush into writing and submitting your assignment just before the due date. It’s best to plan ahead and allocate the necessary time each week.

Due dates are very strict. No late work is accepted (although there might be some exceptions for very serious circumstances). You will need to read the story assigned for the learning week, submit a written assignment, discussion assignment, and a learning journal. You will also take quizzes, grade your peers and provide feedback. This can feel overwhelming at first, but as weeks go on, you get used to the schedule and the workload starts to feel natural.

You can make your own due dates. For example, I like to submit my discussion assignment on Sunday, my written assignment on Tuesday and my Learning Journal on Wednesday. This way, I can guarantee that I won’t be rushing to complete the work.

✔️ Research Beyond the Content Provided

The internet is full of open source and free resources that you can use to complement your learning. UoPeople’s curriculum is based on open source resources, but that doesn’t mean that you need to restrict your learning to what is provided. You can research beyond the scope of the course.

Expand your knowledge by diving deeper into the content. Practice each topic with free online quizzes and interactive exercises. Be proactive, be curious, seek knowledge. This curiosity will be a vital skill for you, as an online learner.

Think about it, it’s very similar to traditional classroom settings.Traditionally, you go to a classroom and your professor assigns readings and resources, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick an extra book from the library or research online to expand your knowledge. The internet is your best friend to reach millions of free resources that are out there, waiting for you to find them.

✔️ Make a To-do List per Week

I recommend making a to-do list per week and check the items you’ve completed to keep track of your assignments.

The items you should include are:

• Reading assignment.
• Forums.
• Forums — Peer Grading.
• Written Assignment.
• Written Assignment — Peer Grading.
• Learning Journal.
• Self-Quiz.
• Graded Quiz.

✔️ Work Very Hard Every Week

During your degree, you get what you put in. If you work hard to submit a high-quality assignment, you will be rewarded with knowledge and a high grade. If you don’t, then you know what happens… 😞

Try to make your best effort every week and improve consistently by correcting your mistakes. 👍

✔️ Research APA Style Rules for Citation

Citation and Plagiarism are taken very seriously at UoPeople. You will need to give credit to every source you include in your work. Otherwise, you will be committing plagiarism.

It’s okay if you don’t know how to properly cite and reference a source when you start the course (I knew very little about this too! 😊). If you want to start learning how to do this before actually starting your classes, I suggest reading the APA Style Section on Purdue’s Online Writing Lab.

✔️ Ask For Grade Revisions When Needed

Every week, your peers will assess and grade your written assignment and your discussion assignment. Don’t panic! 😱 If you feel that your grade is unfair, you can contact your professor through direct message and ask him/her to check your assignment and provide a fair grade.

I contacted my professor almost every week, and she always responded very promptly to check my assignments. Thank you very much, professor! 😊

✔️ Use a Plagiarism Checker to Check Your Work

When you are learning how to properly cite and reference, there might be cases where you take ideas from other sources and omit the citation. This is very often unintentional, of course, but it can affect you severely because it is plagiarism.

You should check your assignments with an online plagiarism checker before submitting your work. I used SmallSEOTools to check my assignments and my peers’ assignments.

✔️ Take the Self-Quizzes and Optional Quizzes

Every week you will have self-quizzes and some weeks you will also have optional conversational quizzes. These assessments are there to check your knowledge and to determine how well you’ve understood the material.

They are optional and not graded, so you can complete them at any time during the eight week period, but I recommend completing them during their corresponding week to prepare for the graded quizzes and correct mistakes immediately.

✔️ Review your Notes and Quizzes Before the Final Exam

Right now I’m studying for my final exam. Today is January 8th, 2019 (Tuesday) and my final exam is on Thursday. I’ve been reviewing my notes and quizzes to correct any mistakes I’ve made during the course.

The course includes a PDF resource with 16 pages to review the content and to practice your reading skills. The exercises ask you to complete sentences with the appropriate verbs and to answer questions related to short passages.

I’m super excited to take my final exam and to be one step closer to achieving my dream of studying computer science! 🎆 😄

✔️ Learn How to Use the Online Library

LIRN (Library and Information Resources Network) is the online library that UoPeople provides, and it has millions of helpful resources available that you can use in your assignments.

You are now entering a world of serious academic resources, so you can’t use informal resources that you simply google and find on the web. You need to extract information from formal and reliable sources that have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field. This is why the library is so important, because you can use these resources to support your claims in your essays and assignments.

Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the library during the first weeks of the course. I recommend watching this YouTube video to learn how to research on LIRN. 👍

✔️ Have Fun!

This should be a fun experience for you! 😆 Take advantage of this opportunity, enjoy reading stories written by world-renowned authors, and be proud of how much you will learn in just eight weeks.

I achieved so many goals during this course. I learned how plan my writing assignments, how to structure an essay, how to write an introduction, a thesis, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. I improved my grammar and punctuation, learned about dangling modifiers, misplaced modifiers, and so much more!

It was a very rewarding experience for me. I’ve worked very hard these past eight weeks, and I can really say that the effort was totally worth it. ❤️

I wish you good luck with ENGL 0101 and with your degree! 🎓👍

(Originally written in January 2019)