Writing Style Changes

English 101 has helped me alot with my writing techniques. The most important thing I have learned is that every good paper has a thesis sentence. In high school, my English teacher never explained the importance of a thesis sentence. She also told us to make we had a organized our paper properly. Another lesson I have learned is the proper way to use commas. I have always have trouble on my comma usage. I believe that in high school my teachers didn't really care if we were using comma the right way, so they never really showed us how to. While writing papers may be hard it is especially hard when you are use to using slang and short terms while email and texting. While writing some of my papers I have found my self trying to shorten some of my words. As a method of keeping me from using shorten terms while writing my papers I try to spell my words out while texting. My overall experience in the class was wonderful. My writing has greatly improved since the beginning of the semester.

Essay Errors

In my first drafts, I had a lot of problems with commas, sentence structure, and paragraph organization. For my comma problem, I referred to St. Martha's Handbook page 710. I practiced on the exercises in the chapter before revising my papers to make sure I fully understand the chapter. Chapter One on The Art and Craft of Writing, helped me with my paragraph organization. The chapter explained how to develop a paragraph and organize your sentences properly. Organizing my sentences became a big problem for me also. St.Martha's Handbook, page 101, helped me with that problem. I found it very hard to get all my ideas into one paragraph, so I started to mix my ideas. When writing my final drafts, I referred to the St.Martha's Handbook while I rewrote some of my paragraphs and sentences.

These are a few of the source I used for my research argument:

The first source has a lot of information on who is obligated to pay for college support. The information will be used in one of my paragraphs that focuses mainly on that topic.
Ward, Wayne V. “Who Pays for College?” http://www.wwlawman.com/ 30 May 2006 Law Office of V. Wayne Ward http://www.wwlawman.com/CM/FSDP/PracticeCenter/Family-Law/Child-Support.asp?f...

The second source has information on the factors that college support is issued. This information will combined in a paragraph with some information from Cathy Meyer.
Johnson, Laura “Child Support &College Support” http://www.smartdivorce.com/ 15 January 2005 http://smartdivorce.com/articles/college.shtml

The third source comes from a college website entitled The Batt. At first I didn't believe the website would provide good reliable information, but after research I learned that professors from the school go back and reread the information that the students have posted. I really didn't use a lot of information from the web page, but overall the information was helpful.
Foley, Sarah “College Costs Should Be Discussed During Divorce” http://www.thebatt.com/
29 September 2003 The Battalion
http://www.thebatt.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id…

The fourth source comes from Attorney Marta J.Papa. She discusses what requirements are needed so parents can't exempt themselves from their financial responsibility. She also tells us that kids need to be on top of their game academically to keep parents from withdrawing having to pay for college funds.
Papa, Marta J. “Back to College” Child Support Concerns http://www.divorecnet.com/ 17 July 2004 DivorceNet
http://www.divorecnet.com/states/missouri/moart_24

Mr. Standler provides a twenty-one page document on the legal duties of a USA parent. He provides laws on why college is a necessity and he also gives his opinion on the topic.
Standler B. Ronald “Legal Duty of Parent in USA to Pay for Child’s College Education” 11 August 2003
http://cc.msnsche.com/cache.aspx?q=72339068494458&mkt=en-US&lang=en-US&w...

The last source provides a detailed list of the law on college support in each state.It will used when I compare the state of South Carolina to other states.
Meyer, Cathy “Should Child Support Cover College Expenses?” http://www.about.com/ 02 March 2006
http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/childsupportresources/a/childsupportcol.htm

This is an online article written by Cathy Meyer.

The article is a good source because the author goes into great detail about the reasons of why child support should be paid until children get out of college and she tells us the child support law in each state. Ms. Cathy Meyer has a lot of experience with working with divorced families. She is a single mother, relationship coach, marriage educator, divorce mediator, legal investigator, and freelance writer.

This is also an online article about child support laws.

The website is not a good source because the information in the article is not updated. The information in this website was used from the time period of 1970s and 1980s. The information in my paper will use facts and laws from the present day.