Reflection offers you the opportunity to consider how your personal experiences and observations shape your thinking and your acceptance of new ideas. Professors often ask students to write reading reflections. They do this to encourage you to explore your own ideas about a text, to express your opinion rather than summarize the opinions of others. Reflective writing can help you to improve your analytical skills because it requires you to express what you think, and more significantly, how and why you think that way. In addition, reflective analysis asks you to acknowledge that your thoughts are shaped by your assumptions and preconceived ideas; in doing so, you can appreciate the ideas of others, notice how their assumptions and preconceived ideas may have shaped their thoughts, and perhaps recognize how your ideas support or oppose what you read.
a reflective essay on writing
You may wonder how your professors assess your reflective writing. What are they looking for? How can my experiences or ideas be right or wrong? Your instructors expect you to critically engage with concepts from your course by making connections between your observations, experiences, and opinions. They expect you to explain and analyse these concepts from your own point of view, eliciting original ideas and encouraging active interest in the course material.
It is best to discuss your experiences in a work placement or practicum within the context of personal or organizational goals; doing so provides important insights and perspective for your own growth in the profession. For reflective writing, it is important to balance reporting or descriptive writing with critical reflection and analysis.
As with all written assignments or reports, it is important to have a clear focus for your writing. You do not need to discuss every experience or element of your placement. Pick a few that you can explore within the context of your learning. For reflective responses, identify the main arguments or important elements of the text to develop a stronger analysis which integrates relevant ideas from course materials.
Furthermore, your writing must be organized. Introduce your topic and the point you plan to make about your experience and learning. Develop your point through body paragraph(s), and conclude your paper by exploring the meaning you derive from your reflection. You may find the questions listed above can help you to develop an outline before you write your paper.
The value of reflection: Critical reflection is a meaningful exercise which can require as much time and work as traditional essays and reports because it asks students to be purposeful and engaged participants, readers, and thinkers.
Academic reflective writing is often used to evidence that you have done reflection. Therefore, it is often beneficial to first do a private reflection where you can be as informal and unstructured as you want, and then readapt that into a piece of academic writing.
By using a private reflection initially, you can ensure that you get the full learning opportunity without censoring yourself or being conscious of language, before deciding how best to present your reflections to your assessor. This is similar to figuring out what your argument is and taking notes before writing an essay, or to all the background work you do to solve a technical/mathematical problem that you do not include in your hand-in.
Just as developing your argument and working through each step of a problem can be essential for the final essay or hand-in, for some people doing a private reflection can be very helpful in writing an effective academic reflection. For others, writing their reflection in a formal and structured way from the outset helps them structure their thoughts.
Academic reflective writing requires critical and analytic thought, a clear line of argument, and the use of evidence through examples of personal experiences and thoughts and often also theoretical literature.
How can Grades 3 and up students write a reflective narrative essay consisting of an engaging introduction, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion that sums up the essay? Have your students follow these seven steps:
The last step in prewriting consists of your students organizing the details of their essays. A reflective narrative may cover an extended period, so students should choose details that demonstrate their lives before, during, and after the change. A third tool students can use to help plot the narrative is a Time Line, where they focus on the background (before the change), realization (during the change), and finally, reflection (after the change).
Writing a reflective narrative essay is a meaningful way for students to reflect on their lives. Additionally, their writing pieces could help others understand more about them. Therefore, consider having your students share their essays. They could publish their writing pieces by making a class eBook or submitting them to relevant writing contests. Or students can read them aloud to their classmates or family members.
Susan M. Inez is a professor of English and writing goddess based out of the Northeast. In addition to a BA in English Education, an MA in Composition, and an MS in Education, Susan has 20 years of experience teaching courses on composition, writing in the professions, literature, and more. She also served as co-director of a campus writing center for 2 years.
This should be a very personal piece of writing: it is more about you and what you learned. It should highlight the problems you faced, how you feel you improved, and factors that went into the choices you made in your essays.
Final note: This is an essay about you and your writing. Do not interpret or EXTENSIVELY summarize other authors in your reflective essay. Some summary is OK, but just for the purpose of getting to your reflective point.
Reflective essays are academic essays; what makes an essay "good" will work for a reflective essay. What is different about a reflective essay is that the essay is about you and your thinking. However, you will need evidence from your course to back up your reflections.
You should structure a reflective essay as an essay, that is write to persuade your reader of your key reflections (or argument). The diagram above, details how to stucture your reflections through the essay. To find out more see the section on essay writing.
For this assessment, students were required to write a 1500-1800 word essay building on the themes of the course to address the question "We are all pirates". Attached under reference documents is the rubric used to mark the essay (thanks to Dr Caroline Schuster). Notice that it requires both the reflection (reflect, relate and retell) as well as the poor traditional requirements of an essay (Writing and organisation, Supporting claims with scholarly sources).
Have you been asked to write a reflective essay but do not know where to begin? This article will help you understand what a reflective essay is and how to write one from start to finish. You will learn:
A reflective essay is a relatively broad category of academic essay writing. There is no one correct type of reflective essay. In fact, you could be asked to write a reflective essay that is written in the first person or the third person.
Most reflective essays will be thesis-driven. Even though a reflective essay can seem less formal than other types of expository essays you are writing in class, a reflective essay is still considered a type of formal academic writing.
How do you do this? With practice and help from a good writing tutor. Begin by thinking about how you might translate what you are learning in class into writing a good expository essay. Take yourself out of it by considering how you might inform others of your learning.
The body of a reflective essay will be comprised of a series of paragraphs that is purposefully organized, all of which have a topic sentence. Each of your paragraphs also relates to the thesis statement.
Make sure your paper follows the assignment instructions for essay formatting, including using appropriate line spacing (usually double-spaced), correct margins (usually one inch all around), page numbers, headers, or footers, a title page, and a bibliography, references, or works cited list.
A reflective essay is an opportunity for you to apply what you have learned in a course based on your past experiences or future goals. You can also write a reflective essay based on your understanding of course materials or concepts. Reflective essays are often used for admissions to colleges and universities, which means you have probably already written one, whether you know it or not.
Reflecting on course concepts and readings means you are thinking critically and creatively, and are internalizing your learning. In essence, a reflective essay illuminates the goals of your education. If you need further assistance with your reflective essay, please check out our custom essay writing service.
The definition of a reflective essay is pretty straightforward. A reflective essay is a formal style of writing in which the author relates their personal life experiences to who they are now as a person. In other words, they discuss how the past has shaped them over time.
Whatever the case may be, the whole purpose behind writing a reflective essay is to look inward and to think critically about who you are and why you are the way you are. What are your thoughts and why do you have them? How do you feel about certain things and what has led you to feel this way? And what have you learned by going through specific things in the past?
Familiarizing yourself with the requirements for a reflective essay is always a good idea. There are certain requirements for essays in general, for reflective essays themselves, and your teacher may have their own requirements as well.
Similar to other types of essays, there is no limit to the amount of interesting reflective essay topics out there. While your teacher will probably have a list of suggestions for you, there are also tons of great ideas on the internet that you can tweak to your liking. So, settling on just one reflective essay topic to focus on may, in fact, prove to be more difficult than simply finding one you like. 2ff7e9595c
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