10 High School Reflective Essay Writing Tips For Dummies

With a reflective essay, we get an opportunity to look well into ourselves, the kind of people we are and whether we have changes. After examining yourself, you will write about your experiences and how you have developed, grown or changed as a result of these experiences. Here are important tips:

1. Format

The reflective essay’s format can change in a slight manner depending on your audience. For instance, if you are writing for an academic audience or college course, you will have to change how your organize your essay as compared to writing for a magazine

2. Consider the main theme

When making notes for your essay, you should summarize the reading, experiences or the lessons that you learn in a sentence or two. You should ensure that the sentences are both descriptive and straight to the point

3. Write down your point

You should ensure that you have jotted down the points that come to your mind. Consider why these stands out and write some other notes on what you think stands out.

4. Chart the things out

It can help if you had a table or chart as this can help you to keep tract of the ideas. In one column you can list the key experiences.. Note how your experiences, values and beliefs have influenced your response.

5. Question to guide the response

In case you are struggling to gauge how you feel or note down your response, you can ask yourself some questions about the reading or experience and how these relates to you.

6. Keep it short

A great reflective essay should be 300 to 700 long. However, you should confirm whether your lecturer has given direction on the word count.

7. Introduce expectations

In the introduction, you will need to show the expectations that you had for the lesson reading or even experience. For a lecture or reading, you can show what you expected based on the abstract, title or even the introduction. You can briefly describe whether the expectations were met

8. Develop the thesis

After the introduction, you should have one sentence quickly explaining the transition from the expectations to the final conclusion.

9. Have a conclusion

The body paragraphs should offer an explanation on the conclusion.

10. Have a summary

This part should explain well the overall lesson feeling, lesson or the understanding you got from the experience or reading.

Essay Sample

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