August 29th, 2015 | Updated on February 20th, 2024
Writing a reflective essay requires to thinks more about our personal experiences, analyze how we have changed in the course of events, and explain what lessons we have learned from them.
Actually, these essays are about our personal growth, development of our characters, views or skills that were caused by some life experiences.
Writing reflective essays can be challenging if you have never done it before so read our easy guide made by professional writers of educational portal Do My Essays.com that will help you succeed in writing interesting and thoughtful reflective essays.
Format of a Reflective Essay
Reflective essays observe and examine the progress of the writer’s individual experience.
Reflective writing can be presented in different formats depending on the purpose of writing, the discipline, the assignment structure, and the target audience.
Very common are diary entries, logs or blog posts where the author explains how his/her thoughts have changed and evolved in a certain period of time. They can look like some general piece of writing and have no strict format.
When writing for college, your reflective essay should look like typical academic paper and follow format assigned by your instructor.
You have to present, explain, and discuss evidence of your learning and development in a formal piece of writing. Typically, college students are required to write about some experience or provide a reflection based on their reading.
- When focusing on your personal growth, you need to analyze your personal life or work experience and explain how it promoted your emotional growth or personal development, what skills you have learned or how you grew as a person.
- When focusing on literature, you need to give a summary of the literature that you have read and apply it to your own experience and your previous knowledge.
Although the format of your reflective essay may change, you have to follow the common structure for an essay and create an introduction, body, and a conclusion.
If you are not going to argue a point through your reflection, there is no need to include a thesis statement in your reflective essay. You can format your essay in any style: APA, MLA or Chicago.
Structure of a Reflective Essay
In an introduction, you have to explain what the main focus of your reflection is. You can also mention if you met your goals.
Grab your readers’ attention with a hook and give a brief overview of your experience. Don’t provide any details, just make your reader interested to read your essay till the end. The introduction should not be longer than a paragraph.
In the body of your essay, you need to explain how you have changed as a person or what you have learned from your experience.
Here, you should provide enough details and examples to support your arguments and try to be specific as possible.
You can keep chronological approach but make sure that you don’t only summarize your experience but explore the impact of those events on your life and the lessons that you have learned from it.
The body of your essay is actually a reflection.
In the conclusion, you have to summarize your key points and explain the results of your experience. You can also explain your future goals.
You should remind your readers once again how you have grown as a student because your reflective essay has to clearly demonstrate your personal and academic growth.
Reflective essays are commonly associated with academic writing portfolios so your task is to critically analyze your development as a student.
That’s why it is important for you to discuss your strengths and your weaknesses.
When speaking about your weaknesses, you can provide a plan how you are going to overcome your weaknesses in the future and what steps you are going to take to boost your development.
You should use descriptive language and as your essay focuses on your personal development, you can use the pronoun “I” and be creative. But don’t focus on the creativity because your task is to prove your audience that you have improved as a student.
Of course, this quick guide gives general guidelines on writing a reflective essay but you should always check your professor’s specific instructions and follow them.
Source: do-my-essays.com/
