6.2 (part 2), due February 28

As I finished this section, I realized that I was still having a hard time with the notation R/I.  I just don't know what it means in words. For example F[x] means the ring of polynomials with coefficients in F.  I don't know how to think of R/I in sentence form.  I also noticed that whenever you have a lowercase letter r plus an upper case letter R it seems to always be referring to a coset r + R.  I thought that might be a fiarily obvious assumption but I didn't want to teach myself a lie.  Another question I had was does K always denote the kernel or are there times that K could be just a normal ol', run of the mill ring?