20 hours!?

I work 40 hours per week. My job is stressful, but my commute is fairly short. I thought about applying for the English Language and Literature BA Hons course and doing it part time (60 credits per year), but was very surprised to hear from one of the chat help workers that you still need to put aside 20 hours per week! I just don't see how I could manage that. Do you really need to put aside that many hours? I did English at A-Level and enjoyed it. I am a pretty speedy reader and writer.

I work 40 hours per week. My job is stressful, but my commute is fairly short. I thought about applying for the English Language and Literature BA Hons course and doing it part time (60 credits per year), but was very surprised to hear from one of the chat help workers that you still need to put aside 20 hours per week! I just don't see how I could manage that. Do you really need to put aside that many hours? I did English at A-Level and enjoyed it. I am a pretty speedy reader and writer.

It all depends on how you work. I did 120 level 1 credits (the first third of an English degree) in a year and I averaged maybe 3 hours a week, but I didn't bother to do any of the optional study activities or read chapters which weren't relevant to the exam. I don't know about levels 2 and 3, but certainly at level 1 you do not need to spend anywhere near 20 hours a week studying.

A big assumption which does not address different learning rates, learning difficulties and retaining of information. My course which is different and at a different university has a friend of mine spend 2 hours a day while I need to spend 6 hours a day to get the same result. It all has to be scaled.

You don't have any experience of the OU or the modules the OP would do, so you really have no idea what you're talking about.

That is true, but I still think the point is valid.

Just because you managed on 3hrs a week doesn't necessarily mean the OP will. Like I said in a previous post the best thing for the OP to do will try get hold of unit materials, the study planner and more opinions from others on the same modules to get a rounded view. Level One is usually bar far the easiest to get away with doing very little (as it builds from no assumed knowledge for those missing GCSEs & A levels etc..) but it's not as easy when the levels go up especially when those modules are worth more and used in classification, skipping many activities & chapters isn't a wise thing to do.

I've been with the OU for a fair few years now and on degree #2 with them even though I haven't really done any arts & humanities there is a lot in common study wise.

OP you could always start off with one 30 credit module (unless they are these new fangled 60pointers) and see how you find it then the next presentation time double it to 60. Or even if you start 2 modules and can't hack it you could defer a module and take it the next year. There are options.

Indeed, but I don't remember anyone on the Facebook groups spending anywhere near 20 hours studying either. This you understand was discussed quite a lot. I have no doubt that you need to spend longer studying once you start level 2/3 modules, but 20 hours a week for AA100 is ridiculous!