I learned many things throughout the term, including: how to write an essay and how to improve the essays I have already written, how to locate and compose better research through the use of many resources found in the campus library, on the Internet, and in the "Common Sense" textbook, how to properly cite research, examples, and quotes in my paper content research as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through exploring the “Topics and Strategies” textbook, I learned nine different methods used to write an effective essay and how different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used correctly. This past semester I encountered many difficulties trying to write these essays, but through the use of the textbooks, the help of the instructor, and once I was able to classify the different types of essays and styles I found it was possible to overcome. Of all the things I covered, none of them were as taxing as the inevitable research paper. I was worried about the final product and the grade I would get because I haven't had much luck writing research papers in the past. I find them too tedious when it comes to citing research and quotes that I have often done it incorrectly. My works cited page was often messy and disorganized and I could never find enough things to say about my topic to fill the designated word quota. This time around, I felt a little more confident because I found in my text "Common Sense" a detailed guide that helped me overcome my concerns about the specifics of quotation and quotation as well as the he organization of the cited page of my works... .... middle of paper ......clarify the structure and the destination towards which I was heading. By revising my essays, I was able to make the content and message more prominent and make the final versions seem slightly better than the originals, but the final versions were better nonetheless. The instructor did a really good job of guiding me and helping me navigate writing by focusing on some of the issues I was facing and clarifying them so I could understand them better. The instructor helped me develop my grammar by helping me discover what I was missing when building basic sentence structure; the use of commas and semicolons, citations, and how to visualize book and article titles in an essay. This English 101 course I took helped me develop better writing skills and helped me create more in-depth essays and a very satisfying research paper..