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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Writing for Young Readers: Opening the Treasure Chest by Commonwealth Education Trust

4.7
stars
1,273 ratings

About the Course

This course is for curious students and aspiring authors with a passion for writing for young readers. Participate in a dynamic online community of writers as you experiment with your own writing and develop your voice. This course will guide you with a combination of video lectures, online readings, peer reviews, and guest appearances from world-renowned children’s authors. As you work through the writing exercises, you will give and receive feedback from your peers and gain tools and techniques for improving your writing. During this course you will identify stories that matter to you, explore cultural significance and boundaries, and shape your identity as a writer; become familiar with standard elements of narrative (character, setting, plot, theme, language, dialogue, point of view); reflect on your own work and practice essential self-editing skills; see the different ways in which words and art interact, and the possibilities of longer narrative forms; come away with practical insights into publishing options; and create a plan for pursuing your enthusiasm for writing. By the end of the course, you will have ten to twelve extracts of writing that you can develop into a portfolio. Join a dynamic community of many voices from around the world. Find inspiration in your own voice, heart, and place so that you can tell the stories for young readers you’ve always wanted to tell....

Top reviews

DB

Feb 6, 2016

I am a beginner wantabee author and publisher, first steps are elementary, as I need. Self paced, life can get in the way. Instructors are wonderful, as are the guest speakers and interviewees Thanks.

SV

Aug 25, 2023

its one of the best courses I have completed. just wonderful..very precise, revelant subjects and topics and very good activities. thankyou coursera. it was like meditation to me doing this course.

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501 - 525 of 529 Reviews for Writing for Young Readers: Opening the Treasure Chest

By Karina N L

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Nov 12, 2016

Very good :)

By Meredith F

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Aug 30, 2015

Great class!

By Sara M S V

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May 23, 2020

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By Rebecca F

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Sep 3, 2015

I want to give it 3 1/2 starts - sometimes the modules seem really segmented and you spend half the time repeating the same ideas or recapping the course material (that was new that week!).

While the assessment tasks were great exercises, the fact that they're peer-reviewed means that the feedback you get is often unhelpful or poorly informed.

It was a good course to do, but I don't think it's really going to change anyone's life (and I would encourage people to not take the peer feedback too seriously!).

By C. M K

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Sep 9, 2022

It doesn't really focus on writing for young readers. The content are okay in terms of creating writing concept but you would rarely find anything specific for children. If you are looking for basic concept for writing, which this course actually offers despite of what the course name says, I'd recommend to go with Creative Writing course from Weslyan Uni. I kind of feel cheated because the titel differs so much from the actual course content. It should be named "Creative Writing in General".

By Arlene H

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Feb 16, 2021

I enjoyed the course a lot. However, I found that some of the peer reviews were extremely subjective and not really an honest critique of the work. Language barriers were the biggest setback as were the fact that peers are not qualified in critique methods, myself included. It would be extremely valuable for a qualified reviewer to comment on our work and give us the type of feedback we are looking for so we can improve our work.

By Aurelien T

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Sep 30, 2015

Far too basic in content. It's clearly aimed at people with next to no experience at all on writing and publishing! However, it still is insightful and inspirational as, 'Writing for Young Readers' is taught by two established children writers and, packed with interviews of other writers from all around the world. A nice introduction but, just that -an introduction. If you have experience writing (for children or else)

By Jennifer F

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Jul 27, 2020

Course Material is good, particularly the last module and David Hill's author interviews. I would suggest that you limit the uploadable file format to pdf because I'm wary of grading documents that are not pdfs that I have to download to read. For example, instead of an enquiry letter a student submitted an anime image, and I can't tell is that a misunderstanding or a joke.

By Sue L

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Dec 12, 2016

While I found the content and instructors to be very good, I don't feel I received any true constructive criticism that will help me with my writing. I would have preferred having an instructor review my work and provide proper feedback. I understand it costs to have someon

By Alexander S

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Feb 5, 2016

A good but simple introduction to writing. The instructors (particularly David) are friendly and helpful - it's just that nothing is dealt with in any great depth. However, that helps make it good as an introduction.

By Around H

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Dec 22, 2020

I enjoyed the assignments and reading the other peoples work. I would love to hear from the instructors personally on my work. It is good to read others writing and get some feed back.

By Cristian S P

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May 30, 2016

Kind of basic about the writing stuff, i wish it work more about audience and characteristics of each age. Very useful the second part of the course, about editing.

By Marjolein D

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Dec 18, 2015

Good videos but strucural info and help. Unfortunately , for me it wasn´t very exciting or motivating and perhaps that is because of my own interests.

By Monica B C

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May 22, 2020

Yo envío mis trabajos, pero dice que estoy atrasada y no se como revisar el porque del atraso. Necesito ayuda. Gracias

By Eddie M

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Dec 21, 2015

The last two weeks of this course held great information. However, the first three weeks seemed to lack focus.

By Mogeeb A R M

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Feb 3, 2020

Nice course for writers in the start of their career, specially those intending to write for children.

By Ana O

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Sep 3, 2015

I enjoyed the course but I would prefered it to be longer. I found the second part more useful.

By Kate M K

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Aug 20, 2021

A very good introduction for writing stories. Lots of useful, practical advice. Thank you.

By Bel K

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Dec 16, 2021

This course has some really good information about writing for young people.

By Annabelle k l

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Oct 26, 2015

Its intresting but often feels repetitive and more like advertising.

By Thomasybruce

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Sep 8, 2015

The interviews and course discussion are invaluable in this course.

By Amy

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Mar 24, 2016

Pretty basi

By STEPHEN E

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Oct 9, 2016

Very generic advice although the interviews with children's writers were illuminating and helpful. The marking system was inaccurate, for example it deducted marks for submitting an assignment over word count when it wasn't! Good, solid advice about setting character, scene and place and ideas to help you out of writer's block. The two main presenters were very knowledgeable and it was pitched to an international audience. Some of the activities were repetitious but I guess the craft of writing is but there was a sense of the course tapering away at the end with a proposal letter to a publisher with very little exemplar material being provided to assist.

By Maureen M

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May 1, 2021

I really enjoyed this course and the others I have taken through Coursera as well, but I am frustrated with the marking system! Some peers don’t fully understand the criteria or they are scammers, give 0% and tell you to take their English as a second language course. The system should figure out how to flag these people somehow. If I got 100% from one and a 0% from another that should tell you something.