UoPeople: My thoughts after taking the English Composition 1 Course(ENG0101).

I've taken English Composition 1 course(ENG0101) at UoPeople last 2021Term5(2022/06/16-08/17). As It was the first time for me to attend a university online and obtain some good ideas, I leave some memos for the students who will take this course, and for me to review them. 

1. What is ENG0101

This course is required course for students who don't have proof of their English proficiency when they enroll in UoPeople. Even though it is a selection course for enrollment, it progresses like the same process as other credited courses.

The rough process of the course is below.

• Week(Unit) 1 ~ Week(Unit) 8 :
  The students are given the following assignments each week: Reading Assignment(RA), Written Assignment(WA), Discussion Assignment(DA), and Learning Journal(LJ). These assignments are required to submit until the next Wednesday.
• Week(Unit) 9 :
  The students have to take a Final Exam. There are no assignments in the week except the Final Exam.
• Week(Unit) 10 :
  It exists on Student Portal, but there are no assignments.

2. What I learned in ENG0101

I consider I could obtain the knowledge, which is necessary basic thoughts regard with Academic English for learning in UoPeople, and the practical methods to progress the courses.

I learned:

1. about the Citation and how to use it.
2. about Critical Thinking.
3. how to decide on the thesis.
4. how to write 5 paragraph essay.
5. about the manners when replying in the discussion.
6. about what the Reviewed paper and the abstract are.
7. how to use UoPeople Library.
8. about the basics of grammar.

Roughly say, I learned the contents above.

Before taking this course, I have little knowledge about using citations or writing an essay, so it was so significant for me to learn about them through taking my time to write my own essay putting 5-6 weeks into it. In addition to that, it was the first time for me to learn English in English, and I had a great time learning it. Since I was not able to prove my English proficiency when I enrolled at UoPeople, I took this course, but I could practically learn many basics, which include how to use Moodle, before starting regular courses, I consider taking this course was eventually good for me.

3. The areas of improvement

Throughout the course, I did mistakes twice when I submitted the assignments for WA and LJ. Its were caused by not reading RA enough, so I found out the importance of reading up about it.

4. Some advice to the students who will take this course

I consider completing this course not quite difficult for the students who do what they have to do diligently.

The students should:

1. put their time into doing their assignments completely even if they spend a lot of time. Because the assignments given every week seem to be simple and easy to solve, but actually, they are well-considered good questions, so the students want to spend their time considering answering them.
2. be conscious of the composition of the writings. As the course is named "English Composition", I consider this course is made for fostering the student's ability to compose writing.
3. comply with the instructions when the students tackle the assignments. It is natural to comply with the required command. If don't, the student's grades should be downed.
4. learn from other peers. There are peer review assignments in the course. Peer review assignments are so useful in that they could let us see the other student's answers. Reading others' answers gives us a chance to know better opinions and expressions, and it makes them enhance their opinion.
5. do the Self Quizzes every week. Because the questions in the Graded Quizzes, which are in Unit 3 and Unit 6, are from the Self Quizzes, so the students want to review them before taking the Graded Quizzes.

5. About the Final Exam

There is the Final Exam at Unit9, and unfortunately, there is no relevance between learning through the course and the Final Exam. So, the students have to study for the Final Exam apart from the course learning contents. Regarding the Final Exam, I will describe it in the other article, please see it.