How to Write a Reflection Essay.

Basically, writing a reflection essay is a good exercise to sharpen your

critical thinking skills. You have to understand what it is that you have to reflect on before proceeding
with the essay, otherwise you will only lose track of your ideas or, worse, you will not be able to write
anything that will make sense. Keep in mind that a reflection essay is more like a journal where you jot
down your thoughts or how you feel about a certain topic. Your topic may be a film, a book, an event,
or just about anything.
Before starting with your reflection essay, ask yourself a couple of questions, such as: how do I feel
about this topic? How does it affect me, if it does at all? If it doesn't affect me, why? Notice that the
questions are all personal. That is because a reflection essay asks you to express your insights.
Knowing the answers to these personal questions can help you begin your reflection essay. Do not limit
yourself to these three questions. Explore more that asks you to state your opinion. Leave out the facts
first. Concentrate on your insights.
After having the answers to the personal questions stated above, list your answers. Thereafter,
summarize them into a single sentence. This will be your main controlling idea or central thesis which
will guide you throughout the rest of your reflection essay. With your thesis statement, identify the
arguments or ideas that will support it. You may expand or write more about each supporting idea in a
paragraph. Each of these paragraphs will then be the body of your essay. Try to include factual
statements in these body paragraphs, such as what you have observed, so that your claims are well
supported. Sufficient reference to facts is a good way of giving substance to your reflections.
After you have finished writing the body paragraphs of your reflection essay, return to your personal
questions. This time, however, ask yourself as if you are trying to confirm what you have written: is
this how I truly feel about this topic? Is this how it did affect me, if it did at all? If it didn't affect me,
why? This is a matter of reaffirming your honesty in writing your reflection essay. You should only
provide your truthful reflections, otherwise writing down the things that are far from what you truly
felt defeats the very purpose of reflecting on the topic. Also, write down how and why you arrived at
your insights. Be consistent and avoid one idea in one paragraph clashing with another idea in another
paragraph.
In your reflection essay's conclusion, briefly restate your main insight or thesis. You may end with a
question, asking how others might have thought about the same topic. You may also end with a
challenge to your readers, such as asking them to reflect on the same topic and ask the same questions.
At any rate, what is most important to remember is that a reflection essay is generally a personal
assessment of a topic that may or may not affect you and others.

Reflective Essays
Ernest L. and Zac E., writing center tutors
Please keep in mind that these are only general guidelines; always defer to your professor's
specifications for a given assignment. If you have any questions about the content represented
here, please contact the Writing Centers so that we can address them for you.
A reflective essay is a form of writing that examines and observes the progress of the writers
individual experience. While reflective essays explain and analyze the development of the writer,
they also discuss future goals. Reflective essays are often associated with academic portfolios
and especially writing portfolios. As part of a writing portfolio, reflective essays will critically
analyze your development as a student. This should include a discussion of the strengths you
have developed as a writer as well as your weaknesses. Closely related to these weaknesses,
writers could also discuss how they plan to improve in the future. When writing a reflective essay,
it is important to use descriptive language. In doing so, your reader will understand that you are
familiar with the subject matter and that you have thought critically about your development as a

student. Reflective essays are based upon your own experiences, so it is expected that you write
about yourself, your ideas, and your opinions. As a result, it is completely acceptable to use first
person pronouns such as I or me in these essays. Since the reflective essay is built upon
personal experience, the writer has the liberty of being as creative as necessary. At the same
time, do not let a focus on creativity take precedence over the important task of proving to your
reader how you have grown as a student.
Structure
The structure of a reflective essay is very similar to the structure of most academic writing. Unless
you are trying to argue a point, position, or perspective through your reflection, it is not required
that your essay contain a thesis statement. Reflective essays can be formatted in all writing
styles, including MLA, APA, and Chicago Style. A common structure for reflective essays is as
follows:
Introduction
Introductions to reflective essays do not need to be longer than one paragraph in length. When
writing an introduction, present the purpose of your reflection without giving your reader too much
detail about the body of your paper. In the introduction, it is also helpful to tell your reader if you
met your goals or the goals of the class/project. Later, in the body of the reflection, you can
explain how these goals were or were not met in greater detail. Think of the introduction as a brief
preview to the rest of your reflection.
Body
The body should discuss in detail your development as a student. For instance, if writing a
reflective essay at the end of the quarter for a certain class, how did you grow over the course of
the class? What have you learned? Can you apply what you have learned to your future
academic or life pursuits? How did you or did you not meet your goals or the goals of the
class/project you were involved in? This is slightly different from what you should discuss in your
introduction. Do not just tell the reader whether or not you met these goals. Rather, show the
reader by using illustrations from class or other relevant experiences. Are there any skills you can
improve on? If so, how do you plan on doing so in the future?
Conclusion
In the conclusion of a reflective essay, you should remind the reader of the ways in which you
have developed as a student. This may seem redundant since you already discussed these
things in detail in your essays body, but remember that the conclusion is the last thing your
audience will read. As a result, leave no doubt in the readers mind that your essay clearly
demonstrates how you have grown.

How to Write a Reflective Essay

In a reflective essay, you need to express your thoughts and emotions about certain
events or phenomena. Writing this type of essay provides solid training to sharpen your
critical thinking skills, as well as your ability to develop and express opinions on a
particular topic either chosen by yourself or assigned by your instructor.

Steps for Writing a Reflective Essay

1.

2.

3.
4.
5.

Think of an event that could become the topic of your essay. When you have
chosen an event, ask yourself how you feel about it, how it affected (did not affect)
your life and why? This will help you create a thesis that will be the focal point of
your essay.
Make a mind-map. Write down your thesis and draw a circle around it. Now identify
your main arguments and ideas that will support it and help readers follow the
evolution of your thoughts and experiences, group them into paragraphs that you
will write later, and connect them to your central circle. Creating this type of flow
diagram will help you see the overall structure of your essay more clearly. Finally,
decide on the logical sequence of these paragraphs and order them accordingly.
Write a strong opening paragraph. Your introduction must be eye-catching, so that
the readers become engaged immediately.
State your supporting arguments, ideas and examples in the body paragraphs.
Emphasize only one point or experience, as well as reflections on it, within each
paragraph.
In the first sentence of the conclusion, briefly summarize your thoughts. Think
about what you have learned and how your experience might be useful to others.
Finish your essay with a rhetorical question to your readers about how they might
act in a similar situation. Alternatively, ask them to think about a related topic on
their own.

Topic Selection
Since writing a reflective essay supposes that you will write about a personal experience,
you can choose whatever event you like. It is almost like a diary, where you write down
your thoughts about a significant happening in your life. It can be about reading a special
book, a difficult situation that you faced, a person that you encountered the main point
is to state your opinion. For example, you can write about:

a trip to an exotic place

a situation involving a human rights infringement in some distant country
a book that you have recently read
a conflict in the Middle East
a certain personality
the solving of a difficult problem
a successfully completed research project
the issue of alcoholism

Key Points to Consider

1.

Your introductory paragraph could give a hint about the conclusions in your essay.
For example, it could state: When I first saw a desert with my own eyes, I thought
that it is was possibly the most lifeless place in the world. However, as I studied it in
more detail, I found that my surroundings were not quite so desolate as I had
imagined.
2.
Since a reflective essay is particularly based on personal experience, it is
acceptable to use the personal pronoun I.
3.
Usage of one or more quotations in the introduction can make your writing more
authoritative.

4.

In most reflective essays, apart from describing what went right, you may also
describe what went wrong, or how an experience could have been improved.

Do and Dont

Do

Dont
Do write your ideas in a
descriptive manner. Your
thoughts must be stated
clearly, so that your readers
understand exactly what you
wanted to say.
Do remember that despite
your essay being of a
reflective type, it is still an
academic paper, so try to
keep it as formal as possible.
Do follow the classical
structure: an introduction,
main body paragraphs, and a
conclusion.
Do keep in mind that you
should write your essay
basing it not only on a
personal experience, but also
using some factual material.

Dont be too personal.

Despite the fact that a
reflective essay is based on
personal experience,
remember that you are
writing an academic essay,
not a letter to a friend.
Dont try to cram all your
experiences into one essay;
choose the most important
and significant examples.
Dont try to write everything
at once. Compose a mindmap and create an outline
that gives a clear direction to
your writing.
Dont make your essay a
free-flowing analysis that
includes all your unstructured
thoughts, insights and ideas.
Sort your ideas in a logical
order.

Common Mistakes When Writing a Reflective Essay

- The inclusion of too much personal information in your essay. Remember that your main
goal is to state your opinion and analyze a certain issue, referring to some of your past
experiences and reflecting on them not to write your autobiography.
- Ignoring the structure of an essay. This results in a disorganized, incoherent text which
the reader will find difficult to comprehend.
- Being too informal. When writing a reflective essay, keep in mind that its style should be
academic.
in a reflective essay, you recount something that you have experienced, and say what
you learned or how the experience changed you. The language used in a reflective essay
should be first person, primarily past tense, primarily concrete, with a coherent tone and
level of diction.

First Person
You should use the first person -- I, me, my -- in your reflective essay. This is an account of
something that actually happened to you, as well as your thoughts on the event.
However, it is still possible to overuse the word I in a first person account. Avoid
distancing language, such as I saw or I heard, in which the I comes between the
reader and a direct account of what happens. In most cases, directly stating what you
saw or heard, without the I, makes for much stronger writing.

Past Tense
Most reflective essays should be written in past tense, about an event that the author has
already experienced. The reflection portion of the essay may be in present tense -- I
think, I believe -- if the author is presenting new or current thoughts, or it may be in
the past tense -- I realized, I understood -- if the author is presenting reflections that
occurred in the past. In either case, the difference in time between the event and the
reflections should be clear.

Concrete and Abstract Language

Use concrete language to describe the experience that forms the heart of your reflective
essay. Concrete language refers to anything that you can literally see, hear, smell, taste
or touch. Examples of concrete language include her high voice, the basket of
oranges, a metallic smell, etc. The point is to bring your reader as close to the
experience as possible. In your reflections on this experience, you will most likely need to
use abstract language, that is, language that talks about ideas. Examples of abstract
language include honesty, goodness, emptiness, etc.

Coherent Tone and Level of Diction

Though you may chose from a variety of tones and levels of diction when writing your
reflective essay -- from serious and formal to ironic and informal -- you should be
consistent. If you start at a formal level of diction, as in an academic paper, your essay
should be formal throughout. Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, you should
avoid slang.

Writing a Personal Reflective Essay

In this type of writing, your purpose is to engage your reader with more than just a retelling of a story. You must reflect on your experience and really outline how you have
changed as a person and how your life has been affected or impacted.

Personal Writing
This is writing about something that has happened in your life and has really impacted on
you for good or bad.
For example:

Something that has changed your life - birth, death, illness or an issue.

Something that really annoys you - racism, bigotry or social inequalities.

You will be writing about your memories of an event or experience which you had
significant feelings about before, during and afterwards.
You are not re-telling the story.

Reflection
This is perhaps the more difficult segment. When reflecting you really need to think about
yourself and how the personal experience changed you.

You are reflecting on memories of your feelings, expressing them, reflecting on

them with thoughts and opinions, and considering them with the power of hindsight
(looking back).
What have you learned about yourself?
How have you grown? Developed? Changed?
Statements such as: "Looking back", "I can see now" can all start the reflective
thinking process.

A reflective essay:

Explores some aspect of the world.

Presents your thoughts and feelings on it
Discusses how you think it has affected the person you are today.
Describes the person you are/your opinions of yourself.

Guide to writing a personal reflective essay

Plan your essay.

Do some research. Read newspapers the comments or

opinion sections are often personal or magazines, or watch
debate programmes such as The Big Question.

Edit your work. Your first attempt is never going to be your

best draft. Rework it. Reflect on each paragraph if you have to.

Jot down ideas, feelings, memories or opinions as they come

into your head, and think about why you feel like that.
Topic: You need to introduce your topic early on. Grasp your
reader's attention. You can do this in a number of ways:

A small anecdote.
A quote.
Starting with end of the story and working backwards.
A flashback.
Interest: The main body of the essay needs to be interesting. Some
pupils spend so much time on the introduction that the main essay
becomes boring and flat.
Motif: Have a motif or symbol running through your essay. For
example:

The dark patterned armchair in the corner of the living room

is always there. It holds her and her worries. It holds the
pain that is still blatantly apparent. It holds my mum and as I
gaze into her frail weak eyes- I still feel the torture she
endures on a daily basis. Her eyes dart back and forth yet I
know she hides her pain. She's crumbling inside and will not
be healed- just like the tatty hole in the arm chair in which
she picks and picks until no more foam can be found. She
picks and picks at her brain- blaming herself "Why us?,
Why my baby?" circulating her thoughts at every turn. There
are no answers and although I thought things will never be
the same again... I now know that they never will.
Tone: Make sure your tone and personality are shining through.
Anecdotes: Use anecdotes to engage your reader. For example:
I have always wanted to be an actress. It is my main
ambition. I have always wanted to be an actress
could become:
Acting: it has been my sole ambition ever since the day I
met David Tennant on a plane coming back from holiday. We
sat for hours chatting and planning my next step in my soon
to be startling career Well no, not really, but this is what
acting is all about - pretending to be someone else for day,
an hour, a while.
Use sophisticated vocabulary. Think of word choice and the effect
you want.

A wide range of adjectives or descriptions is essential for

personal reflective writing.
Try not to use adjectives such as happy or sad or nice or
good or OK, they don't really tell us how you felt about something,
and they do not reflect your personality.
Successful personal writing also uses a wide range of verbs.
Verbs help you to describe to the reader exactly how you did
something and how you felt while you were doing it.
Try not to use verbs that are over-used, such as said or went
or walked or laughed or cried.
Some people come right out and say how they feel.
Other people imply (through some of the techniques we've
discussed) how they feel.

For any piece of writing you have looked at, use one colour to
highlight the explicit feelings and a second colour to highlight
implicit feelings.
Punctuation: Use a variety. Everything that you see in a Close
Reading paper should be present in an essay: colon, parenthesis,
ellipsis, semi-colon, dash etc.
Imagery: Use a variety of imagery to describe your emotions.
Compare your sadness, tears, happiness, excitement, nerves, panic
etc. to something else.
Turning point: Every personal experience has to have a turning
point. This is a point in which your line of thought or perspective
changes.
Reflection: Perhaps the most vital element. You need to think about
how the experience has changed you or others. Look back at the
turning point and think:

What have you learned about yourself?

How have you changed?
What could you have done differently?

Example Personal Essay: shortened version

"We all know about racism; we even know about ageism; but do we really know
about the daily jibes and abuse that is aimed at some people due to the colour
of their hair appearing: odd, weird, strange, horrible, freaky... RED?"

Engaging introduction.
Topic outlined.
Sentence structure building to a climax.
"Looking into the mirror I could see it. My long flowing hair causing me hours
and hours of misery. Closing my eyes I prayed it would disappear or even
fade. No amount of make up, hairstyles or different clothes masked my feelings
of hate for the hair I had been genetically inflicted with."
The mirror is a symbol that is referred to again at the end of the essay.
Hey Ginger, can I get a heat is a phrase commonly repeated to people inflicted
with red hair.
A humorous tone is established.
"From an early age the comments made to me about the colour of my hair has
irritated me to my inner core. On my first day at Secondary School it was a
scorching summer's days. I felt so hot and nervous that beads of sweat formed
on my forehead as I stood waiting in the playground. My heart was pounding
and a strong feeling of trepidation strongly lingered as I wondered what my
new teachers would be like. However, when I entered the school, that's when
everything changed. I could hear them. I could hear the hyena like laughs. I

could hear the comments of check the state of her hair. That's horrible. At this,
I felt like I had been ripped apart. I was in pain and just wanted to escape and
not return. Tears began to obscure my vision as I desperately tried to escape
and hide. I frantically rushed to the toilet and dreaded the rest of the day. Why
did they have to say this to me? Why would they say such a thing? I just
couldn't understand. I have never been able to erase this feeling from my
memory."
"A long time has now passed since these initial comments; unfortunately they
continued on a regular basis. I would regularly beg and plead with my mother
to dye my hair so that I could feel more normal. The hair styling aisle at the
local supermarket would call to me as soon as it entered and mocked me as I
left-minus any hair dye. Even my Uncle-at the birth of his daughter, said
Phew... for a minute I thought she had red hair, thank God it's not. It is these
types of remarks that really infuriate me. People may only utter these words for
a few seconds, but these words resonate within your mind for years to come
and eat away at you like a vicious case of woodworm; eventually leading you to
feel unworthy of functioning in the real world.
"Now that I have grown older, I still have red hair but I no longer feel so
distressed about it. Looking back, I now understand that these people (or
bullies) found something that-in their opinion - was my flaw."
This is the reflective element.
They pounced upon me like a piece of prey and succeeded in crushing my
confidence. More importantly though, I recently faced a huge turning point. Last
year a close friend of my family was diagnosed with cancer. I remember
meeting her at the local supermarket and she had lost all of her hair; yet was
still smiling. The pain and suffering that this gentle woman was experiencing
was excruciating and much more extreme than any feelings that I had ever
endured. She later died. She had passed away.
Died.
This is the turning point, and the isolated sentence is used for effect.
"Her death was so unfair. When I received the news... I was dazed and
confused; this is what it really felt like to be ripped apart. My ludicrous, shallow
worries about my hair colour were dramatically put into perspective and really
made me re-evaluate what was important in life. For too long I have wasted
time thinking about hair colour and appearance. I have now learned that it's OK
to be different. I know that I was not the first person with red hair to be picked
on, and I will not be the last."
Reflection on what has been learned.
"If I am truthful, I actually don't want to blend into the background-I just want
to be me. The society we live within in is looks obsessed but it doesn't mean
that I have to be. I now like the fact that my hair is: odd, weird, freaky and dare
I say... GINGER! Looking into the mirror, I now know that I am so worth it!"