A reflection paper is usually about your personal experience and what you gained from that experience. It describes your thoughts and feelings throughout and after that incident. Since you primarily examine your life experiences, hence the word ‘reflective’. The idea of writing a reflective paper is to recount a particular experience and explore how you’ve changed or discovered from that experience.
Reflective paper can be written in various formats like a diary entry or log format. The format may vary depending on your target audience. Academic reflective essays are intended to encourage students to think critically and intensely about a particular experience or a set of experiences. Here are some types of reflective essays that you may write for class assignments:
• Reflective paper on personal growth
The purpose of this paper is to promote psychological growth and development by allowing you to examine your personal life experiences. You can gain a better understanding of yourself and your actions by writing this paper.
• Reflective paper on literature
The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the literature, which you will apply to your own life experiences.
Although there is no set format for penning down your personal account, the structure of paper remains much the same as any essay. A reflection paper typically comprises of an introduction, the body and conclusion. Here’s a simple format from assignment writing services Australia to help you write it:
1. Introduction:
The introduction, as the name suggests, presents an idea to the readers about what the paper is about. The introduction should be catchy so that readers get interested to read further. This section also warms up the readers to what they are going to read. You can briefly describe your experience and its effect on your life without divulging too much. You want the reader to read till the end.
2. The body of the paper:
This section contains your experience. You can describe the experience, when and where did it happen, etc. Make use of adjectives to create a picture that the readers can see, feel, hear and even smell. Your thoughts during that experience should be included in this section. The body can be a concise narration of your experience with all the consequences of the incident that impacted your personality or your family or group of friends.
The changes that you felt after that experience form an important part of the body section. You can include your realizations or thoughts from the incident. Reflection writing is considered easier compared to informative essays since there is no researching involved. Your realization is based on the effects of your personal experience that could be good or bad. It could be about the lessons that you learned and from which readers could also learn something. Moreover, you can use this section to discuss what you gained or lost due to that experience.
3. Conclusion:
Like every paper format, the conclusion sums up everything you’ve written so far in the paper. Conclude it with an outline of your experience, thoughts, and realization. Instead of depending on the facts, you can choose to finish the paper with your personal thoughts. In fact, this will make your paper different and simpler to write.
What can you write about?
When deciding on what to write in your essay, you should remember that a reflection paper is extremely personal and intended to engage your target audience (or your tutor). The reflective essay is so much more than just narrating a story. This is an opportunity to reflect on your experience and show how it affected your subsequent actions and how this experience has particularly changed your life.
To make a start, think about important incidents in your life that left a deep impact on you, either positive, negative, or both. Some common reflection paper topics include a personal experience, an imaginary experience, a book that you read or a movie that you saw, some special place or object, or a person who greatly influenced you. If the reflective essay is a part of an academic assignment, your tutor expects you to describe a particular event when you made a crucial decision and evaluate its aftermath. Remember, the outcome of the experience is particularly significant in a reflective paper and missing this out can turn your essay into a mere storytelling.
Once you choose the topic, you need to examine it carefully and go about thinking about it clearly. Write down things you remember with reference to that incident and try to describe it as vividly and thoroughly as you can. Once you’ve listed all the things successfully, you can start reflecting on them. A simple way of doing this is to identify some reflective questions to help you think about the incident and its lasting impact on your life. Consider some examples of reflection questions:
• What did you learn about yourself due to the experience?
• Did the incident help you to develop in some way?
• How has the incident impacted your life – any positive or negative behaviour?
• Given another chance, what would want to change about that experience?
These questions would help initiate the reflective process and ensure that you think intensely and seriously about your experiences – an ability that is integral to writing a brilliant reflective essay.
It seems obvious, but the process of reflection or deliberation is important to write this essay and you need to understand this right from the beginning. You could really think about a personal experience that impacted or inspired you. Use your feelings and memories to find out implications of the incident on a personal level.
Writing a reflection paper for the first time? Ask Source Essay assignment building services for assistance.
Don’t worry if you have little or no idea about how to write a reflection paper. We can help you understand what the paper should be like and how’s it written. Our academic experts can suggest some topics that can serve as starting points for your reflection process. Know more about the writing format and correct structure of writing a reflective essay so that your content can truly offer an insight into your experience.
