Table of Contents

Table of Contents Reflection Letter Intro to my MWA piece MWA piece Intro to my writing effectively piece The piece I wrote effectively Intro to my analytical piece Analytical piece Intro to my piece of choice The piece of my choice Conclusion

It has been a Pleasure

Well the English 98 is over and I just want to say it has been a pleasure working with all of you. Thank you all for the wonderfull discussions we had from DB assignments, to MWA, to seminars all of them have grate experiences to share with every one of you. I also want to thank Phebe for all the ways she made this class fun.

I do not know of this poem is makes sense with what I have been talking about, but I wanted to share it anyway.


Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I believe that just like Mortenson and many other people we should also take the road less traveled by. Because I believe that it will lead to wonders we cannot even imagine. God Bless all of you on your journey.

Sincerely Aaron Fry

The piece of my choice

I chose this piece because we had to take an average story and spice it up a bit with some creative words. Being creative with words is something I really enjoy doing there is just something about taking a story that is boring and making I come alive that gets me excited. That’s why I believe this was one of my better assignments in this class because this style of writing is one I am so passionate about, and it made this particular piece of writing stronger than others I have done before. Here is a little part of my story to show you what I mean. “ Janet hammered on the door, and moments later, it opened to reveal the vulgar looking scientist, with a face like a chopped up piece of meat. Brad and Janet stole a glance at each other and then Janet woke up from her dream screaming, sweat dripping of her face.” With this assignment I thought I did a good job painting a picture in the readers head, and especially in the part you guys just read I felt that it was the part of the story I was able to describe more vividly than any other part of the story. Anyway this type of creative writing is the kind that I love, and I hope that I will be able to write more of it in the future.

Intro to the piece of my choice

For my last piece I chose one of the DB assignments called Janet and Brads Excellent Adventure. I wrote this assignment on February-11-2009 and titled it Your Worst Nightmare. In this DB assignment we had to take a story and that was in the book Steps to Writing Well, and fill in the blank spots with creative words in order to make the story more lively.

Analytical piece

Since an analysis is the ability to take a concept and break it down into its most elemental parts ,at least that it what I was told, I thought what could be more analytical than analyzing oneself? This assignment was actually kind of hard for me because I had a difficult time trying to analyze myself, but with some work I was able to do it.
“I am Aaron Fry
I am 18 years old
I am a Christian who loves to share the good news of God with people.
As well as martial artist who loves a good workout.7
My height is 5’ 11’’, I have brown eyes and hair, and am a kindhearted man who looks weaker than I really am.
I am a writer
I am a musician who plays flamenco music
I am a actor but sadly have not had enough time to do a lot of acting.
I love the Lord God Almighty with all my heart, mind and soul.”
This is only part of my Inventory of being, but I believe it really shows that I have at least have some analytical skills. After all I had to sit down and really do some analytical thinking about who I am, and pick myself apart piece by piece. Although after a while I thought I came up with some pretty good ideas that not only showed who I am, but also the quality of my analytical skills. Or so I hope.

Intro to my analytical piece

For my analytical piece I chose the first assignment we ever did in English 98 the inventory of being. Which is a piece of writing that we were supposed to described ourselves in, so others could get know us a little better. I did not think of a good title for this assignment though I just titled it Aaron Fry’s Inventory of Being. Since this was the first assignment for the entire class I wrote it very early in the quarter the 7th of January to be precise, and I must say it was certainly a fun piece to write.

The piece I wrote effectively

The DB 15 assignment is both a summary and a paraphrase about the advantages and disadvantages of having all of the US. high school’s morning class schedules changed to start at a later date. Even though I have written several other assignments like this one in this class I felt like I wrote this one more clearly and effectively, because with this one I avoided parallelism as well as using the second person voice. For instance the beginning of my paraphrase starts like this; “ A teenagers brain differs from others, and starts later in the day, as well as stays alert well in to the night. So the problem for most high school students, is all of their classes that start earlier in the morning, but changing the class schedules could be very difficult.” As you can see I stayed clear of parallelism and use the second person, and kept my writing more clear and concise. Making my writing easier for my readers to understand.

Intro to my writing effectively piece

The assignment DB 15: Summary and Paraphrase is one of the assignments I felt I wrote pretty effectively. My title for this assignment is called High School Schedules, Good or Bad?, and I wrote it on the 18th of February. In this assignment we had to summarize USA Today’s essay: High Schools, Wake Up! and paraphrase Paul D. Houston’s Opposing View: Reform No Child’s Play.

MWA piece

The theme I had for my paper as you can guess from the title is about how spanking is not some horrible evil that most people think it is. Instead spanking can actually benefit a child if used properly. Since this paper was an argument paper I believe I had a very strong argument about my subject especially in the second paragraph about child abuse. Where I stated the oppositions side clearly and effectively, and then defended my point of with a lot of good detailed information. For example here is part of my paragraph “Alas many parents have come to the decision that hitting a child in any shape or form is an abusive way that will harm their child. I agree with them that abusing little ones can damage them greatly, and that the abuse of a child is wrong and always will be. But I’m not talking about beating up a child, or giving him fifty lashes with a whip that would be an outrages way to treat a child. What I am talking about is that giving a kid a small swat on the bottom that will get his attention, and not do any harm to him.” I thought this little part of my paper gave a good account for both sides of my subject, and from it the reader can see I am giving both sides a fair amount of credibility. Which is what I was taught that we needed to do in an argument paper in order to show that we have a good grasp on both sides of what we are talking about.

Intro to my MWA piece

This first piece is going to be about the last MWA we did on an argument paper. In this type of paper our assignment was to pick a subject that we felt were strongly for or against, so I decided to do my paper on the subject of spanking. My paper is titled Spare the Rod Spoil the Child, it was written on March-4-2009, and is about how spanking can actually benefit a child instead of harming them.

Reflection letter

For me English 98 OL2 has been a different kind of class, in the sense that I have not taken an online class before, but also a good kind of class, in the sense that it helped better my English. Especially in areas that involved grammar and clarity this class really get better in these areas. Hi my name is Aaron Fry, and when I finally fulfill my dream of becoming a Fish and Wild Officer I know that this English class and others like it will help me in the career I have chosen because believe it or not there is a lot of writing in this profession. You see a police officer must write a report on every incident he is involved in, and I believe a Fish and Wild Officer must do the same thing. And if a report is not written well, or is hard to understand it is very easy for the to get thrown out and the case to get never look at. So having a vast amount of knowledge of the English language will help me greatly in this job.

Anyway I picked this job because I love the outdoors as well as writing, and the career I chose has both these things that I love so much. Although the fact is that even though I have become a better because this class becoming a better writer is not the only thing I have learned from this class . Through my service learning project and the book Three Cups of Tea I have been shown how good it is to help people who are in need.

For my service project I helped out at the Monroe YMCA by hanging out with the teens, making sure everything was safe so they could have a secure environment to relax and learn in, as well as just setting a good example for them by being a role model they could look up to. But both the book and my project taught me that although the U.S may not be in as bad a condition as Pakistan. There still are kids in the US. and in Monroe who just like the Pakistani children need a safe place to learn and have fun, and I’m glad the YMCA has provided that for the kids of Monroe. I am also happy that I was able to help keep that place safe as fun place for them to go hangout, have fun and learn. Another thing this class has shown me is how good I really am at writing by helping me pick out my strengths and weaknesses.

This class has really shown me what my strengths and weaknesses are in my writing such as; the good vocabulary and the strong voice I have in my papers could be said to be my strengths. But some of my weaknesses are fragments, run-on sentences and sometimes parts of my papers can be very unclear. Although thanks to this class my weaker skills have been improved while my stronger skills have gotten even better.

Based on my strengths and weaknesses I believe that I have chosen the appropriate pieces for my portfolio. For my MWA I have chosen the last one we did about the argument paper. I titled mine Spare the Rod Spoil the Child. DB 15: Summary and Paraphrase was one assignment I thought I wrote effectively, and for my analytical piece I chose the first homework assignment we were given the Inventory of being. I chose this one because analyzing yourself can be very hard to do. For my last piece I am going to choose the short paper we did on Janet and Brad’s excellent adventure because I love creative writing and this assignment involved a lot of creative writing, so it was really fun to do. When I take all the pieces that I have mentioned above and reread them I think of papers I have written, and how I have gotten better. I also look at these pieces and realized that if I work even harder I can write even better pieces than the ones you are about to read. And as you read these pieces I hope my writing was good enough to make the little trip you are about to take through them enjoyable.