How to Write a Reflective Essay: Step-by-Step Guide

Have you been assigned to write a reflective essay?

Yes? It will be a great chance for you to polish your creativity and writing skills.

If you are one of those students who lack knowledge about how to write a reflective essay, you are at the absolutely right spot.

This article is a complete guide for you to write an outstanding reflective essay. Dive in and learn.

1. What Is a Reflective Essay?

If you want to learn what is a reflective essay, here is the reflective essay definition:

“A reflective essay describes an experience or event, then analyzes the meaning of that particular experience and the lessons it delivers.”

One thing that makes an essay reflective is that the writer analyzes an event of the past from the present.

In reflective essays, you open up about your emotions and thoughts in order to paint a clear picture of your personality, history, and individual traits.

It is required that you include a description and a vivid summary of the experience. It will make the reader feel that he has experienced it as well. Moreover, you need to explain your reactions, thoughts, and feelings.

2. Reflective Essay Ideas

Check out these reflective essay ideas on the most common subjects you can write about:

• Something from your imagination
• Something you have experienced in real
• A special object
• Something you have seen, heard, read, watched, touched, or smelled.

These subjects sure have sparked your imagination, here are a few more specific ideas, which can help you write an amazing reflective essay:

2.1. Places You Have Been

• The desert, mountains, countryside or beach
• A special room or hideaway
• The house you grew up
• Home of some relative
• A relative's home

2.2. Life-Changing Events

• New Experiences
• Special date
• Important conversation
• Significant memory
• The time you overcame your fears
• Succeeding or failing at something
• The time when you mastered something new

2.3. Significant or Recurring Thoughts

• A daydream or dream
• A powerful emotion
• Something you always wished you had done
• A conversation you always wished you had
• A story about yourself
• An embarrassing moment you experienced
• The person you want to be
• The happiest moment of your life

2.4. Influencing Experiences

• A concert
• A social media post
• An article or magazine
• A vacation
• A movie, T.V. show, play, song, or other form media

2.5. Important People

• Your best friend
• Your mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, siblings, nephew, or niece.
• Someone who made you happy
• A life coach or special teacher
• Someone who hurt you in the past

3. Reflective Essay Format

The reflective essay format is similar to other essay formats. Here is the structure for you to learn how to start a reflective essay:

3.1. Introduction

The first paragraph of your essay should comprise of an introduction in which you recognize the subject and provide the reader with an overview of the impression you have taken from it. The introductory paragraph of your reflective essay needs to include a thesis statement, which will act as a focal point of your paper.

Example of Thesis Statement: “Why was I so peaceful while driving a car on the same road, which nearly took my life? I realized I had embraced the demons of stress and fear. Now, I am as light as a feather.”

3.2. Body Paragraphs

The first body paragraph should include one reason your subject has made an impact on you. After mentioning that reason state, why it had impacted you.

Remember one thing while writing body paragraphs of a reflective essay, you have “freedom”, freedom to express your views and freedom to share your feelings and influence you felt as a result of the incident or topic you are writing about. There are no wrong or right questions in this type of essay.

Correspondingly, repeat this strategy of explaining one idea per paragraph in the second and third paragraph.

3.3. Conclusion

Restate your thesis statement and summarize all the reasons that you have mentioned in the body paragraphs of the essay. After that, sum up your essay with your final thoughts on the subject and close your essay with some reflective thoughts.

4. How to Write a Reflective Essay?

Writing a reflective essay is a great chance to polish your skills of writing and expressing your feelings and experiences, creatively. However, sometimes, it gets difficult and confusing to write it. Here are a few tricks to learn how to write a reflective essay remarkably.

4.1. Choose Your Topic Carefully

If you are given freedom of choosing a topic and you don’t have any idea regarding it, you can choose one of the topics from the above-mentioned list of topics to get inspiration. You need to be very wise in selecting your topic.

4.2. Research About Your Subject

Make sure you do thorough research on your topic first. Close your eyes and start imagining or remembering. Watch, listen, and read the information regarding your topic. Take your time and think vividly of your subject as if your re-experiencing it.

4.3. Brainstorm

Before you even start writing, brainstorm your ideas first. It is always a wise step to take before writing anything.

In this stage, try to write everything that you can about your subject. You need to describe your subject as vividly as you can. For that, think about noises, smells, and tastes with what you see or remember.

You can write adjectives, which describe such sensory experiences. If you are not good at it, you can search for sense-describing words for assistance. These words can be used in sentences or phrases. After that, you can turn such words into a paragraph.

Example: “This road looked the same; the concrete, traffic, and the same sounds of horns. As I took the next turn, the whole incident flashed before my eyes. All I could think of was a pain, blood, and the screams of my soul. Suddenly, I noticed I was shivering badly. I stopped my car slowly. I needed some air to escape from these haunting thoughts. I stepped out of my car and started walking. I was feeling so helpless, and I burst into tears. Unconsciously, I dialed a number of my mom because I really needed someone to give me emotional support and elevate my courage. She picked up instantly and when she heard my panicked and broken voice . . . . . “

4.4. Choose Reflection Questions

Read the listed reflection questions and choose at least three of them to answer in your essay.

• What did I notice?
• What do I feel about it?
• Why am I feeling this way?
• How was this particular experience emotionally significant or difficult to me?
• How was this experience unique to me?
• What I should have done differently?
• Why does this event mean so much to me?
• Why did it change me?
• Why others who were there at the same time, experienced the same thing differently?
• Why experiencing this event felt like déjà vu?
• How can my experience help someone else?
• Why experiencing a certain thing is typical in my life?
• Why will I relate this event for the rest of life?
• Is it a bad or a good thing for me?
• How this experience can predict things that will happen in the future?
• What kind of skills I have learned from this experience?
• How did this fulfill my expectations?
• How can I relate this with something that I have learned in my life?
• Is my experience unique? Does someone else never experience this before the way I did?
• How am I going to use this experience in my studies?
• How can this experience assist me in my career?
• How this particular experience has changed me socially?
• In which ways this experience has expanded knowing and understanding of my own traditions and customs? or other traditions or customs?
• Why did I have a specific reaction to this experience, and what is it?
• How this experience was related to my connectivity with religion, God, and theology?
• How this experience changed my way of thinking and understanding?
• How my experience made me realize someone else was right?
• How did this fulfill my expectations?
• Why did this experience affect me, and how?
• Do I want to experience it again?
• Would I feel the same if I experience it again?
• Why was it unexpected?

Example: "I selected these questions: Why was it unexpected? How did this fulfill my expectations? Why this event means so much to me?"

4.5. Answer the Questions You Have Chosen

After selecting your questions, you need to give their answers. Start from one question, make sure you answer it properly. After that, head to the next one.

Example: “Why was it unexpected?” We both were enjoying, singing along with the songs on the radio, laughing and screaming out loud. We were having the best evening of our lives. We saw a car coming towards us with maximum speed in the wrong way. I did not know what I should do. It was totally unexpected. I panicked and scared.”

4.6. Recognize Your Experience’s Meaning

Before you even start writing, you need to choose what is that most significant lesson you have learned from your experience. This “most significant lesson or thing” is going to be the thesis of your essay.

Example: "What I learned from this accident was that even if you fall badly in your life, lose confidence to live anymore, and it seems like everything that you have always loved is taken from you, you can still rise again like never before. Although it was the ugliest thing that happened in my life and it was one of the scariest memories that I never want to re-experience again in my life ever, it made me strong and powerful from the inside.”

4.7. Follow the Structure

Like all the other essays, reflective essay has also the same format, comprising introductory, body and conclusion paragraphs.

Make sure you write your essay according to this format and add the kind of content as mentioned above in the article.

4.8. Proofread and Edit

Never submit your blog without editing or proofreading. Even though you have spent hours of effort and put a lot of hard work in doing your essay, your essay will have no worth if you haven’t proofread and edited it.

Make sure your essay has zero grammar, punctuation and sentence structure mistakes. Moreover, remove all of the irrelevant information that you find in this part.

5. Reflective Essay Outline

If you want to get a clear picture of the reflective essay outline, here is the pdf attached for your learning.

Reflective Essay Outline (PDF)

6. Reflective Essay Examples

If you like to see the correct way of writing a reflective essay, here are the pdf of a few reflective essay examples attached for your learning:

Reflective Essay Example (PDF)

7. Conclusion

A reflective essay is slightly different from other essays as it requires a personal point of view about the chosen subject. You need to analyze a particular subject with your personal understanding and knowledge.

The only key to write a reflective essay is that you need to be more expressive. The more expressive you are, the merrier it will be for your essay.

Remember this article or revisit it every time you are assigned to write a reflective essay and amaze your teacher with your outstanding content.

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