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All students face the task of writing different kinds of essays. A reflective essay is one of the most interesting and creative types of learner's work in college. The essence of this text is that the author writes about some important social, historical, psychological and other topics, but at the same time, he or she gives real examples from his or her own life. This approach to writing a reflective essay allows you to demonstrate the writer's personal interest in the topic, on which he works, and show his or her creative skills. The description of situations that really happened in your life is much more interesting than copying well-known thoughts. Therefore, such work will always be popular among readers. Here are some important reflective essay writing tips that will help you create a good paper.
The Rules of Creating a Reflective Essay
Choose a Proper Theme
One of the most important reflective essay writing tips is to choose a correct theme for your work. You always need to focus on the needs of readers, that is, to choose topics that will be interesting and relevant for many people. For example, not everyone will want to read the text about some scientific theories, but many readers will be interested in social and historical topics. Researches on the psychological characteristics of relationships between people can be relevant to a big audience too. For example, write about your relationship with your father, elder brother or grandmother; describe some conflict situation, its solution, and your own conclusions. Speaking about the social problems of society, write about your communication with the peers. If you or your friend were victims of discrimination or violence of your classmates, do not be afraid to tell the public about it. In the context of history, you can write about historical events that you have witnessed and parallels that can be drawn between them and the current situation in the country and in the whole world; you can make your predictions for the future based on your personal vision of past events.
Write a Plan
The success of your essay depends largely on the correctness of the plan writing. Composing an outline of a reflective essay is not so difficult at all. This process is no different from creating a plan for any other text. First, you have to think a lot about the topic that you want to demonstrate in your work. Then you need to take a sheet of paper and write down all the thoughts that you have about your future work. Note everything that comes to mind, because each idea can be useful. Then reread your notes and highlight the points that you consider the most important. On their basis, you can build a consistent plan of your work.
Build Your Text Correctly
When you have already chosen the topic of your future work, you need to understand how to write a reflective essay. The structure of this type of paper does not differ from any other text. This means that you must start your work with an introduction. In this part, you should present a problematic question, which you are going to explore and describe in the body of the text. You can immediately start with an example from your personal experience. For example, "As a child, I always could not find a common language with my elder brother, "or" because of my unusual appearance, I often was the object of ridicule for my classmates." In the introductory part of your essay, do not tell the whole story and do not discover important details, just present the topic and intrigue the readers.
One of the most important reflective essay writing tips is that in the body part of your work you must demonstrate the course of events that have happened to you, here you should not write too briefly. Show all the important details. Although it is generally assumed that an essay is a fairly small text, there are no clear canons of its size, so, you can write as many paragraphs as you need to reveal the topic fully. It is not necessary to limit yourself to only one instance from your life, you can write about several similar stories. You can tell not only about yourself but also about your friends and close people. The main thing is that you should be the witness of those incidents; your essay ought not to present some generally known facts, but describe a unique experience, which is known only to you and some other people. Write clearly and only about those things that illustrate the main problem issue. Avoid unnecessary metaphors and epithets. In the reflective essay, the form has less significance than its content.
How can you describe an event from your life? For example, tell the readers that you often quarreled with your father. Indicate what the reasons of your arguments were, what mistakes you and he made, what parallels can be drawn between your problem situation and social issues. Note that your story can become a lesson for other people.
The last and, perhaps, the most important part of the reflective essay is conclusion. It is such a valuable paragraph of this type of paper because here you show the essence of your life example and sum up all your reflections. Conclusion, like the introduction, is quite a small part of the text, so it should be written briefly and clearly. Do not mention all the points that you have described in the body part of the work, note only the most important thoughts, to which you have come in the course of your reasoning. Creating a paper is a very interesting and cognitive process. These recommendations and useful tips will help you understand how to write a reflective essay correctly. This work will teach you how to express your thoughts in a proper way and discuss the pressing problems of the society.
