Lecture Essay writing & presentation skills - Lecture 18: Reflective essay

Lecture 18

Reflective Essay


Recap
•

What is Personal Essay?

•

Definition of the Personal Essay

•

Subjects for the Personal Essay

•

The Personal Essay as a Personal Narrative

•

The Personal Essay as a Personal Opinion

•

How to Choose a Topic
–

Make the Most of Life Experiences

•

Resources for Writing Personal Essays

•

Steps for Thinking about the Personal Essay


Sharing your experience . . .
From Reading to Writing
In their essays, Emerson and Thoreau reflect
upon some basic truths about life that they
derived from personal experience. Emerson’s
words:
“Who so would be a man, must be a
nonconformist,”
still poke us to examine our lives today.


Sharing your experience . . .
Like

Emerson

and

Thoreau,

you,

too,

have

experiences from which you learn important lessons.
A reflective essay describes a personal experience
and explores its significance.
•

Autobiographies, letters, and memoirs often
include reflective writing that gives insight
into the writer’s action.


Basics in a Box
Reflective Essay at a Glance

Standards for Writing
A successful reflective essay should:

•

•

•

•

•

•

be written in the first person
describe an important experience in
your life or in the life of someone you
admire
use figurative language, dialogue,
sensory details, or other techniques to
re-create the experience for the reader
explain the significance of the event
make an observation about life based
on the experience
encourage readers to think about the
significance of the experience in light
of their own lives


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Prewriting
To find ideas for your essay
• Try listing some memorable experiences.

You
might
look
through
family

photograph albums to help jog your
memory.
• Make a list of people who inspire you.
What have these people done to earn
your admiration? Jot down some notes
about an incident from each person’s life
that shows his or her special qualities.


Planning Your Reflective Essay
Think about your experience.

1.
•

•

•

Why do you remember this experience more clearly than
others?
What different emotions did you go through during the
experience?
Did your emotions change?
Explore the significance.

3.
•

What is the significance of your experience?

•

What is the most obvious meaning to you?

•

What else did your experience teach you?

•

Keep exploring to uncover as many levels of meaning
as you can.


Planning Your Reflective Essay
Planning Your Reflective Essay

3.

Decide on the scope of your essay.
Will you dwell on one example in-depth or
relate several events to create the impression
you want?

4.

Decide on the message you want to
convey.
How can you encourage your readers to

apply the meaning of the experience to their
own lives?


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Drafting
A writer’s material is what he cares
about.
John Gardner


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Drafting
Begin Writing
• You might write about your experience
as though you were writing a journal
entry. Or, you may want to begin your
draft by trying out a variety of ideas. Let
your ideas flow even though you sense
problems you’ll need to address later.


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Drafting
Organize Your Essay
• Start your paper with an account of your

experience
and
then

explain
its
significance.
• From that point, go on to discuss the larger
lesson about life that the experience has
taught you. Or, begin with the larger lesson
you want to share with your readers and
then describe the experience that helped
you learn this lesson.


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Drafting
Elaborate on Ideas
• Precise, vivid language will help you
convey the lesson about life you want to
explain.
• After you write a rough draft of your whole

essay, set it aside for a while before you
go back to revise it. Taking a fresh look
will help you see problems that you may
have overlooked.


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Revising
Target Skill
AVOIDING CLICHÉS

Make sure that none of your images are
clichés, expressions that were once fresh and
powerful but have since been overused.


Writing Your Reflective Essay
Editing and Proofreading
Target Skill
POSSESSIVES AND PLURALS

As you revise your reflective essay, be sure
that you have formed plurals and
possessives correctly.


How to Write an Reflective Essay?
•

In a reflective essay, you need to express
your thoughts and emotions about
certain events or phenomena.

•

Writing this type of essay is good training
to sharpen your critical thinking skills,
as well as your ability to develop and
express opinions on a particular topic –

Steps for Writing an Reflective
Essay
Step # 1: Think of an event that could
become
the topic of your essay.
Since it is
going to be a reflective
essay, ask
yourself:
»

How you feel about this event?

»

How it affected (did not affect) your life and why?

This will help you formulate a thesis
that will be the focal point of your
essay.


Steps for Writing an Reflective Essay
Step # 2:

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 the reader follow the
evolution of your thoughts and experiences, group
them into paragraphs, and connect them with
“rays” to your central circle.

»

Finally, decide the logical sequence of these
paragraphs and order them accordingly.


Mind Map


Steps for Writing an Reflective
Essay
Step

#

3:

paragraph.
eye
becomes

Write

a

strong

opening

Your introduction must be

catching, so that the reader
engaged immediately.


Steps for Writing an Reflective
Essay
Step

#

4:

arguments,
the body

State

your

supporting

ideas and examples in
paragraphs.

Emphasize only one point or
experience, as well as reflections on
within each paragraph.

it,


Steps for Writing an Reflective
Essay
Step # 5: In the first sentence of the
conclusion, briefly summarize your
thoughts to date.
Think about what you have learned
and
how your experience might be useful
to others.
Finish your essay with a symbolic
question to your readers about how
they might act in a similar situation.
Alternatively, ask them to think about
a


Topic Selection
•

•

•

•

Since composing a reflective essay presupposes 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 some significant happening in your life.
It can be a book, an event, a person – the main thing
is to state your opinion.
For example, you can write about:
–

a trip to an exotic place;

–

a situation involving human rights in some distant
country;


Topic Selection
–a

book that you have recently read;

– conflict
–a

in the Middle East;

certain personality;

– the

solving of a difficult problem;

–a

successfully completed research
project;

– the

problem of alcoholism.


Key Points to Consider
•

Your introductory paragraph could
partially disclose or 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 exanimate place in the

world. However, as I studied it in more detail, I
found that things were not quite so bad as I
had imagined.”


Key Points to Consider
•

Since a reflective essay is particularly
based on personal experience, it is
acceptable to use the personal pronoun
“I”.