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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Getting Started with Essay Writing by University of California, Irvine

4.7
stars
3,206 ratings

About the Course

Course 2: Getting Started with Essay Writing This is the second course in the Academic English: Writing specialization. By introducing you to three types of academic essays, this course will especially help prepare you for work in college classes, but anyone who wants to improve his or her writing skills can benefit from this course. After completing this course, you will be able to: - create effective thesis statements for your essays - plan and write compare/contrast, cause/effect, and argument essays - write well-developed body paragraphs Note: The lectures and practice activities are available for free, but you must upgrade to the pay version in order to take the quizzes and get feedback on writing assignments....

Top reviews

TR

Oct 26, 2021

It is actually quite a simple course, easy to attend as it does not require a long time each week. However it did improve my writing skills, I'm considering to attend the next advanced writing course.

BD

Nov 16, 2015

Thank you for teaching me how to write basic essays. This has been one of my most important goals for years. I've tried several other ways of learning but your method worked for me. Thank you so much.

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826 - 850 of 869 Reviews for Getting Started with Essay Writing

By Rinny J

Feb 7, 2016

I didn't like this course as much. Mostly because the peer reviews were strict and unforgiving and as an experienced, essay writer, I didn't feel I needed the rigid, boring academic structure required for this assignment. However, I made it through with a decent mark so I'm grateful for it.

By Lavender W

Jul 5, 2020

It is not very difficult for me because I have a lot of knowledge about grammar and so on, so maybe it varies from person to person. I think it better make a test before we learned and give us suggestions to learn which part.

By Chieko T

May 6, 2019

It's a very useful course; however, peer graded system doesn't work well because we have few peers. On the other hand, Edx has a staff graded system which works very well. Coursera should reconsidered the peer graded system

By catherine k

Jan 16, 2017

The ONLY reason I rated low is because I paid this course and am receiving NO feedback from other students on essays. Very frustrating when you have tried to do your best but get no peer reviews.

By Trishant R

Jul 27, 2020

Good course for learning about essay writing. The course is very repetitive after Week 3 since the instructions for other essay types are the same. Overall, the course is easy to complete.

By Momin U

Aug 28, 2020

The learning experience was brilliant; however, in peer review, some fellow students give 0 marks without any definite reason. Fellow students need to take peer-reviewing seriously.

By Jose A V

Apr 30, 2020

The content is good but I wish there was more support from instructors. For example, giving a detail review of essays in order to learn a lot more would be ideal for students.

By Brylle B

Mar 30, 2023

Honestly, the peer-graded assignments are unnecessary. It takes too much time and is kinda boring. However, the video discussions are easy to understand and knowledgeable.

By Divya A

Sep 2, 2020

It is not for all. Most profitable for school going pupil or college students. But lots to learn. Just not suitable for me.

By Maksim O

Nov 15, 2015

Much better than the first course in the specialization.

Too many dependencies on non-standard data formats, like MS Word.

By Jingfei Z

Jan 9, 2017

It is a good course, but if you want to hand on the assignments, you have to pay. So I am a little disappointed.

By Supantha R

Aug 7, 2020

The course was OK,but it could be better. They could provide us with more information.

By Portia A

Nov 16, 2015

Its ok, I didn't learn a little and I didn't learn a lot.

By 罗詹妮

Dec 29, 2015

Too easy. The example showed is not very academic

By Lan Y W

Aug 25, 2024

I was okay but the grading AI wasn't great

By Anwar R

Mar 27, 2019

Don't charge for the quizzes please. :D

By Karen R T

Sep 20, 2020

It was a good course! Well organized!

By Luana B

Mar 16, 2016

The course was great and interesting.

By 匡翔宇

Mar 27, 2017

还行吧。当然只能带入门,学一点理论。要想学会论文写作远非这门课能做到的。

By Ayham T

Dec 21, 2019

Good learning opportunity

By Derrick G

Jul 17, 2019

looks good !!!!!!!!!!!!

By harpa ó

Dec 1, 2015

It was okay.

By Patricia

Feb 26, 2016

I took the first class in this specialization. I liked that enough to enroll in the second class, however I did not realize that it was being taught by the same teacher. Nothing against her, she certainly taught the class and met the objectives, she just speaks too slow/articulates too precisely for me. Also, I was not aware that Coursera changed the auditing policy. As an auditor, I am no longer able to participate in the assignments or quizzes in this class. Without the ability to do the assignments and receive peer feedback, it seems pointless to continue the class. Furthermore, there was a problem with the practice exercises... You need to download an app to do the practice, which I did several times, but the lessons or assignments never worked. I sent notes to coursera about this with no reply. The low rating is primarily based on the fact that I could not do the practice assignments and that coursera took away the ability to complete assignments and take quizes.

By Miriam R

Mar 9, 2017

The video lectures were good, the tests were almost a give away and the essays were an opportunity to practice what I learned from the lectures. My only BIGGEST disappointment is that the essays were evaluated by students like me. I received evaluations that doesn't tell me much or evaluations that doesn't make sense. If I only knew that this course was not an instructor supervised course, I would have been willing to pay extra money just to get a professional to assess my essay and provide me with feedback. At this point, I am disappointed that I decided to just watch the videos but skip the peer-reviewed essays and make the most of what I paid for.

By Lingfei T

Dec 11, 2015

While some of the materials are interesting in this course, it gives a very "high school" feel rather than providing help with college essay writing. It would be helpful to have this course more geared towards college academic writing and have more emphasis on developing ideas, finding resources to support ideas, synthesizing, paraphrasing and all the other skills useful for college academic writing.

I assume most people who come to Coursera are above high school level. Some of the materials like the monkey example are a bit too childish and the sample articles can be too simple to be appropriate to learners at this level.