A reflective essay is basically a reflection of one’s real life experiences. It expresses the main events, feelings, emotions and opinions of the writer. It helps us in finding the true and actual objective of life. Writing a reflective essay is considered the easiest as it does not require any research; the content is purely based on the writer’s life experiences and personal opinions about life. Generally, it seeks to answer questions like: what are the life events you have experienced that led to where you are now? What was your major turning point which laid the foundation of your current situation? And such other types of questions and brainstorming about our lives and events.
Importance of reflective essays
In this busy world, sometimes we forget our main purpose of life and don’t pause and reflect about our main aim and objective of living. The definition of the current life is determined by the past and the future is what we make of the past and the present. Reflective essay is considered as a tool for making the writers think about (“reflect”) the main events which matter in their lives and how they shaped their current situation. These things are not related to materialism; in fact these are those which are hidden from naked eye like love, family and relationships.
Tips for writing a reflective essay
One of the major features of a reflective essay is that it should be written in first person to reflect the opinions of the writer. The use of “I…”, “me…” in the reflective essay will help the reader understand that the content of the paper is based on the writer’s personal opinions and experiences.
The following are the main points that should be kept in mind while writing reflective essay:
- In about 10 sentences, write a very catchy introduction that explains the topic of your reflective essay. The introduction should represent a synopsis of the body content of your essay and must be the actual expression of the writer’s opinions.
- The introduction part of the reflective essay should bare the thesis statement of the paper in one or two sentences. The thesis statement should be supported by the content of the body and the conclusion.
- The body of the reflective essay should have each paragraph describing a particular subject matter of the writer’s life experience or opinions. The content of the body must be coherent with the thesis statement.
- The end of a reflective essay should have a strong conclusion that recaps the major points of the body. At this stage one should be vigilant of repetition. It is at the stage that the writer expresses experiences or lessons learnt from the events and opinions described in the body. The writer should make it clear to the reader how the experiences described and the lessons learnt would shape the writer’s future.
Writing a good reflective essay just requires a perfection in self-expression with regards to the subject at hand. It does not require any external research nor references as all matters expressed in the essay are a result of the writer’s own experiences. All that is required of the writer is the understanding of the subject matter and unravelling of personal thoughts. The format is all dependent on the target audience.
