Reflection can be defined in 2 ways:
- A personal response to some experience: an event, situation or new learnt information
- the stage of thinking and learning.
Step 1. Reflection process.
- In fact, every writing process starts with pre-writing job. In this case you will begin with thinking.
- Reflection thinking starts with you. The first thing you should do is to assess your own thoughts and only after that you will be able to evaluate other ideas.
- You need to re-examine your thoughts, beliefs and ideas about the topic you are exploring. This will let you explain your attitudes and views on the subject you are wring about.
- This part of pre-writing process also corresponds to recognizing what you already know and what you are learning during some experience.
Step 2. Features of reflective writing.
- The reflective essay shows your reaction to events, processes, experiences, new information, opinions, and ideas.
- You can also provide the response to feelings and thoughts.
- You should demonstrate the exploration of your learning way.
- Remember that reflection writing is not just describing some concept, event or experience. Although it may include descriptive element the main purpose is to show your own thought and reaction about the subject.
- The reflection paper cannot also include a straight judgment that something is good or bad, right or wrong. You have to take into consideration different aspects and provide detailed and reasoned evidence.
Step 3. The purpose of the reflective essay.
- The reflective writing is beneficial for studying process as it helps:
- Make connections between the things you already know and the things you have learned
- Integrate your knowledge
- Understand what you are doing and the reasons you are doing it
- Also, reflection writing will help you to realize not only what you learnt but also how you did it.
- If you are writing a reflection about your mistakes in future it will be easier not to repeat them.
- In case your writing is about your achievements or discoveries the reflection will improve realization of your way towards.
Step 4. A structure of the reflective paper.
- The structure is usually similar to the most essays written through the academic process: an introduction, main body of the paper and a conclusion.
- The introduction should not be longer than one paragraph and demonstrate the purpose of your reflection. Do not provide too many details in the introduction as their place is in the body paragraphs. Here you just need to map a course for the reader.
- The main body of the reflection paper is to discuss your development. Explain what helped you to grow, how you managed to learn something, or in what way you coped with some difficulties. Think if there any new skills you acquired.
- The conclusion should not be too complicated to write as here you need to mark the main spots: the ways you developed. Also, you should show the perspectives which your growth can lead you to.
These are the key points you should consider while writing a reflection essay. Follow our steps and receive excellent results.
Keywords: reflection essay, reflective essay, reflective paper, reflection paper, writing, tips, steps, structure.
Chat with us