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Essay and report writing skills

Course description

Course content, course reviews.

Writing reports and assignments can be a daunting prospect. Learn how to interpret questions and how to plan, structure and write your assignment or report. This free course, Essay and report writing skills, is designed to help you develop the skills you need to write effectively for academic purposes.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• understand what writing an assignment involves
• identify strengths and weaknesses
• understand the functions of essays and reports
• demonstrate writing skills.

First Published: 10/08/2012

Updated: 26/04/2019

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10 Best FREE Online Writing Courses with Certificates (2024)

There are many beginner professionals who want to improve their writing skills and get ahead in their writing careers. Moreover, it is also not feasible for working professionals to go back to school and improve their scribing skills. Thankfully, you will find many online writing classes on the Internet that help you polish and enhance your writing and authoring skills.

Following is a handpicked list of the Top Online Writing Courses & Certifications to gather knowledge about this subject. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) courses.

BEST Free Online Writing Courses for Creative Writers & Beginners

1) good with words: writing and editing specialization (coursera).

Specs: Duration: 4 hours a week | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner | Mobile apps: iOS and Android

Articles effectively communicate complex ideas and stories in a friendly, credible, and easy-to-follow way. This course, Good with Words , helps you learn how to write and publish an article of your own.

This free writing course explains how you can determine your writing approach, pitch your story to a publication, completely research your subject matter, and write and polish your article content. This course also discusses how you can submit a complete package to editors.

It is one of the best free online writing courses for new writers. It helps you to learn the skills you need to write a well-crafted article that connects with readers.

Key Topics:

• Determining Your Article Writing Approach
• Techniques for adding nuance to your sentences and slogans
• Creative ways to use syntax
• Polishing and Submitting Your Article
• Promoting Your work

Enroll Now >>

2) Creative Writing Specialization (Coursera)

Specs: Duration: Approx. 6 months to complete (1 hour/week) | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner | Languages: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Serbian, Chinese

This Creating Writing specialization course covers three important elements of writing genres: short story, narrative essay, and memoir.

In this course, you will master the techniques that any good writer uses to create a story full of memorable characters. This beginner’s writing workshop also helps you to analyze and constructively evaluate peer writing. It is one of the best writing courses designed for anyone, from aspiring short story writers to established novelists.

• The Craft of Plot
• The Craft of Character
• Setting and Description
• The Craft of Style
• Self-Paced learning option for students
• HD quality course videos
• Practice quizzes
• Graded assignments with peer feedback
• Quizzes with Feedback
• Programming assignments

3) Creative Writing: Crafting Personal Essays with Impact (Skillshare)

Specs: Duration: 1 hour 1 minute | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate

Creative Writing is an online proofreading course that shows how to give your writing more impact, regardless of its purpose. In this online course, the writer and journalist Tom Geller help you to search reasons for writing with the demonstration. The writer also teaches you how to use those reasons to drive the words you select and the tone you take.

The author of this course also shares his understanding of grammar and sentence structure for writing with maximum impact. After completing this free online writing course, you will be equipped with plenty of practical writing tips to make your writing clear and crisp.

• Meaning of writing with impact
• Learning about your Readers
• Understanding How People Read
• Key Idea: Looking Inward and Outward
• Helps you qualify for continuing education units.
• Professional author instructor.
• Certificate on completion.

4) Secret Sauce of Great Writing (Udemy)

Specs: Rating: 4.5 | Duration: 41 minutes of on-demand video | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate

Secret Sauce of Great Writing is a course designed by Shani Raja. This course will teach you the four main concepts of good writing: Simplicity, Clarity, Elegance, and Evocativeness. It will also help you learn how to add those ingredients skillfully.

At the end of this online writing course, you will have a good grasp of how professional writers create powerful and beautiful prose. In this online writing course, you can quickly identify your writing weaknesses, understand the principles, and fix and improve it significantly.

• The Secret Sauce of Flair
• The Four Crucial Ingredients
• How I Discovered the Sauce
• The Power of Simplicity
• Simplicity Exercises
• The Power of Clarity
• Clarity Exercises
• The Power of Elegance
• Elegance Exercises
• The Power of Evocativeness
• Evocativeness Exercises
• Online video content
• Instructor Q&A
• Instructor direct message

5) Essay Essentials: Improve Your Academic Writing (Udemy)

Specs: Rating: 4.4 | Duration: 1hr 14min of on-demand video | Certificate on Completion: Yes

Essay Essentials: Improve Your Academic Writing is a video course that helps you learn how to write essays. This free writer’s course will help you find the essay writing success you deserve by learning essay writing foundations.

• How the writing situation, process, and classroom resources.
• Brainstorm to create and use ideas that help you to develop the essay.
• Develop and structure introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
• Write a clear, specific, and well-connected thesis.
• Understand the organization of essay paragraphs.
• How to create detailed, specific, and appropriate content.
• Proof-read spelling and grammatical errors using helpful rules and tips.
• Certificate of completion accredited by universities.

6) Writing With Confidence: Writing Beginner To Writing Pro (Udemy)

Specs: Duration: 5 hours 50 minutes | Pricing: $24.99 | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate | Mobile apps: iOS and Android

Writing With Confidence is an online course that helps you create ad copy that effectively conveys your brand and drives traffic to convert clicks into sales. The course designer Michael Duquet also teaches you the rules for writing ads for different platforms.

The author of this course, Clare Lynch, explains how you can change your message and tone according to your target audience and customer personality.

In the last chapters, you will learn about Create musical sentences that readers can’t resist.

• Rules of Ad Copy Writing
• Ad Copy Goals
• Writing Ad Copy for various media
• Understanding Your Audience
• Personas and Tone
• Do and Don’ts.

7) Craft Your Cover Letter (Udacity)

Specs: Duration: Approx. 1 Day | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner

Craft Your Cover Letter is a short course where you will learn to use proven writing techniques to show why you are the best person to do this job.

In these writing classes for beginners, you will also learn how to research company values, target your writing pitch, and develop an authentic story. It offers the research and writing tools you need to show why you are the best person for the specific job!

• Target your applications to specific opportunities.
• Students are able to understand the purpose of a cover letter.
• Write an effective introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Rich Learning Content
• Interactive Quizzes
• Instructor videos
• Learn by doing exercises.
• Taught by industry professionals.

8) Write a Book! (Udemy)

Specs: Rating: 4.3 | Duration: 30 hours on-demand video | Certificate on Completion: Yes

Write a Book is an online writing course offered by Udemy. This course explains how to organize and begin writing a short story, novel, or nonfiction book with concepts similar for each form. This online course is ideal for someone looking to grasp the fundamentals of writing using the English language.

• Learn to write basics, like including punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, etc.
• Learn about advanced writing techniques.
• Learn to write short nonfiction books.
• The advanced dialog to draw the reader into your story.
• How to use MS PowerPoint to create a book cover.
• How to discover your writing style.
• Learn how to self-edit your book manuscript.
• 28 articles
• Full lifetime access for students
• Access on mobile and TV
• Certificate of completion

9) The Complete Freelance Writing Course (Udemy)

Udemy offers a wide range of writing courses. This Complete Freelance Writing Course can be viewed on all devices connected to the Internet. You do not require any prequalification to take this course.

Udemy is an online platform that helps you create courses for business, writing, design, marketing, etc. You can develop new skills and achieve your goals by taking training and learning from the extensive library of various Udemy courses.

• Understand different forms of writing styles and methods as per target audience.
• Learn best practices for Blog Writing.
• Learn how to do screenwriting to tell a compelling story.
• Develop methods that help you to stay productive as a writer.

Key Courses:

• Grant Writing for Nonprofits and Freelance Writers
• The Complete Freelance Writing Course
• How to Start a Freelance Writing Career
• The Complete Freelance Writing Online
• Freelance Copywriting: Write Dirty. Go Big
• How to Start Profitable Freelance Writing Business in 5 Weeks

10) Online Creative Writing Classes (Skillshare)

Skillshare is an online course platform that is focused on education. It includes various topics related to graphic design, data science, e-commerce, analytics, etc. This online course will expand your horizons to learn more about creative writing. You can try these online classes that teach about creative writing techniques, tools, and topics like character development, outlining, storytelling, creating a compelling plot, and how you can make your words more artful.

This course helps you to enhance and helps you to create character-driven stories with creative writing prompts. This online class is broken down into short lessons that include hands-on projects to complete and share.

• Learn creative writing in various genres like fiction, poetry, humor, etc.
• It helps you to find classes that are designed for real life.
• Get ideas for writing daily journals.
• Real creators teach the classes.
• You can learn from any device.

11) Write A Feature Length Screenplay For Film Or Television (Coursera)

Specs: Rating: 4.5 | Duration: Approx. 93 hours to complete | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner | Mobile apps: iOS and Android | Mobile Compatible: Yes

Write A Feature Length Screenplay For Film Or Television teaches you how to write a feature-length screenplay for film or television or web-series. In this screen playwriting course, you will also learn to break down the creative process into components. You will also discover a structured process that helps you produce a polished and pitch-ready script.

Completing this online course helps you to improve your confidence in your ideas and abilities. After learning this online course, you will feel prepared to pitch your first script and start with the next one.

• Creating The Idea.
• Logline and Dramatic Question.
• Create your character profile.
• The Three Act Story Arc.
• Screenplay Formatting and Software.
• Begin your screenplay.
• Write the final section.
• Table read your entire script.
• Finishing things up.

12) Start Writing Fiction (Future learn)

Specs: Rating: 4.7

Start Writing Fiction is a course that helps you to create how to develop your ideas, which reflect on your writing and editing. This online writing class is intended for those interested in writing fiction or improving their fiction writing.

• Creation of characters in fiction
• Different sources for characters in stories
• Ways of presenting characters in stories
• Reading as a writer
• Writing skill like creativity, research, observation, and editing
• It provides the freedom to keep access to any online course you’ve achieved a digital certificate of.
• It offers the flexibility to complete your choice of short courses in your own time within the year.

Link: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction

13) English Writing Skills–Revised (Alison)

Specs: Rating: 2.5 | Duration: 1.5-3 Hours | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate | Mobile apps: iOS and Android | Mobile Compatible: Yes

English Writing skills is a free online English language course that will guide you through the most important English writing styles. It shows you how and when to apply each one verb and improve your knowledge about the correct usage of punctuation and grammar.

This online writing course helps you express yourself clearly and effectively in your writing. This online learning material also helps you fulfill your dream of becoming a professional writer or improving your English writing.

• English Writing Skills
• English-Writing
• Story Writing
• Descriptive Writing
• Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Instructional, Opinionative
• Reflective Writing

Link: https://alison.com/course/english-writing-skills-revised

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Here are some important guidelines for selecting an online writing course:

A. Identity your goal:

First, you need to find out your goal. Like you want to learn basic writing skills like improving your grammar, you want to learn notification writing, fiction writing, nonfiction writing, etc.

B. Set your course budget:

Then you need to decide yourself how much money you want to spend, both in terms of time and money. There are many free online writing courses. However, if you want to learn an advanced creative writing course, then you need to pay for that.

C. Pick a Commitment Level:

It is certainly the most important aspect for selecting the online writing course. How much daily or weekly time can you spend learning the course. There are many online courses that are completely self-paced, which means you work through the material on your own and take time as much as you want.

Here are some important Pros and Cons of Online Writing Classes:

• These courses are meant for independent study, so you can learn at your own pace.
• Some courses do not even have homework assignments, writing exercises, or time constraints.
• Online courses give you exclusive information and learning materials.
• You are able to interact and learn with other writers using online communities, which helps you learn to write skills.
• Online writing course sometimes not allows any personal touch of classroom writing courses.
• You will never have face-to-face interactions with associate learners.
• Some online writing courses have no instructor feedback.
• The quality and price of online writing courses vary greatly.

Here are some of the best writing apps which help you to write professional letters:

• Grammarly: Grammarly is a widely used writing enhancement tool. It offers numerous writing styles, suggestions for grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. You can use this tool via the website, as a browser extension, or as an app that you can download to your computer.
• Prowritingaid: Prowritingaid is a tool that offers a world-class grammar and style checking facility. It helps you to edit documents faster. This software includes more than 1000 styles to improve your writing skills.
• Microsoft Word: Microsoft Word is a writing app that helps you transform documents into web pages. It offers a real-time translation facility with just one tap. This program enables you to read and edit documents attached to the email.
• Calmlywriter: Calmlywriter is free writing software. This online application is designed to help you focus on your writing skills. It has a “focus mode” option that can highlight the paragraph you are writing.
• FocusWriter : It is a writing tool that enables you to access the interface by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. The software helps you to translate the content into more than 20 languages. It helps correct spelling effortlessly.
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55 Best Essay Creative Writing Classes in 2024

Showing 55 courses that match your search.

8-week Personal Essay & Memoir II/III (intermediate & advanced)

Sackett Street Writers

Through group discussion of student work, plus that of published authors, writers in this workshop will examine the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The focus will be on learning to understand and use a full range of literary techniques in order to tell a truly compelling nonfiction story.

Website: https://sackettworkshop.com/writing/2023/12/30/8-week-per...

Categories: Essay

Start date:

March, 2024

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Introduction to Personal Essay 6-Week Online Workshop with Diana Spechler

Austin Writing Workshops

This workshop, led by Diana Spechler, explores the art of personal essay writing. You'll receive weekly prompts, read great essays, and engage in discussions. The course, designed for writers of any level, focuses on navigating personal narratives' challenges and ends with at least one polished essay. It's asynchronous, allowing flexibility for participants from different time zones​​.

Website: https://writingworkshops.com/products/8-week-online-intro...

Online Advanced Essays and the Persona Narrator (Ford)

The Writers Studio

In this eight-week class, we will look at published works by notable essayists to see how their use of persona narrator and other elements of craft help them both to live into their material and to welcome the reader.

Website: https://courses.writerstudio.com/courses/online-advanced-...

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Introduction to Writing Speculative Nonfiction Essays

Clarion West

As writers and readers we all bring something different to the page and have our own lens with which we view not only the world, but the media we consume. Learn how to leverage your unique perspective and expertise into a well crafted essay on your favorite media.

Website: https://clarion-west-online.teachable.com/p/gilmore-specu...

Open all year round

Blog and Text Writing for Scientists and Scientific Entrepreneurs

Scientists and scientific entrepreneurs need to inform the public about their work. They are also now aware of the need to do so in the online content world. This course focuses specifically on blog writing. We touch briefly however on how one enters into this type of work.

Website: https://www.skillshare.com/en/classes/Blog-and-Text-Writi...

A Comprehensive Guide To Writing a First Class Scientific Essay

This class is designed to guide beginner writers on how to write a high-quality literature review and research article for STEM subjects. The class is designed to give students a clearer idea of the best practices in scientific writing.

Website: https://www.skillshare.com/en/classes/A-Comprehensive-Gui...

Using the Tools of Fiction in Nonfiction

The Writer's Center

Whether you are crafting an essay or writing a memoir, the tools of fiction can bring depth and suspense to your work. This class will cover four tools of fiction. We will examine contemporary examples of each tool used in nonfiction, and then we will practice them with generative exercises.

Website: https://writer.org/event/using-the-tools-of-fiction-in-no...

April, 2024

Writing Motherhood

This workshop is for writers who have become mothers (self-defined), or mothers who need to write. In this six-week class, we will read and discuss texts on the topic of motherhood from a diversity of perspectives, and explore and interrogate our own relationship with motherhood through our writing.

Website: https://grubstreet.org/findaclass/class/writing-motherhoo...

6 Weeks, 3 Essays

When it comes to writing about our lives and the wider world, it can be difficult to know where to begin. This course is for writers who are ready to produce new essays, but need the inspiration and accountability to get started.

Website: https://grubstreet.org/findaclass/class/6-weeks-3-essays-9/

Prerequisites: For writers age 13 - 18 ONLY.

The Braided Essay (seminar)

Lilly Dancyger

For essays that tell more than a single story or incorporate research, reporting, or criticism, writers can turn to the braided essay format. An expansive and complex form, the braided essay can accommodate these additional elements, but it also takes skill to pull off with cohesion. This 4-week seminar by Lilly Dancyger will help guide you through the entire process, from idea to drafting to weaving strands together.

Website: https://www.lillydancyger.com/the-braided-essay

The Personal/Critical Essay: Writing About Art and The Self

Tin House (with Lilly Dancyger)

This one-day craft intensive class (led by Lilly Dancyger) will study and discuss examples of personal/critical essays, in other words essays which examine art as a way to express personal feelings, thoughts, or experiences. The class will help you generate new writing that sits between art criticism and memoir.

Website: https://tinhouse.com/product/winter-craft-intensive-lilly...

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Intro to the Personal Essay

If you want to learn the art of writing personal essays, but have no idea where to begin (or you need a refresher), this course is for you. Over six weeks, you will learn the essentials of the personal essay and put them into practice by writing your own drafts.

Website: https://grubstreet.org/findaclass/class/intro-to-the-pers...

How to choose an essay writing class

Looking to build your writing skillset, learn more about your genre, or finally finish that essay you’ve been working on? You’re in the right place. That’s why we built this directory of the best writing courses.

However, creative writing classes aren’t one size fit all. If you’re planning to join an essay writing class in particular, you’ll want to make sure that it matches what you’re seeking to learn about essay writing.

So make sure to consider the following questions when you’re researching essay writing courses:

• Who is the instructor? How many years of experience do they have in essay writing?
• Is there something in particular you’d like to learn about essay writing? Does this course include it?
• How long is the course, and where is it taught?
• How much does the essay writing course cost? Does it fit into your budget?

More essay writing resources

Whether you’re a new or established author, there are always evergreen resources out there to how to get a headstart on essay writing. 

Free online materials

• How to Write a Novel (blog post)
• How to Edit a Book (blog post)

Recommended books

• For writers in the UK:  Writers' & Artists' Yearbook  
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