Reflective Essay on Literature Review for Case Study

"The overwhelming burden of writing my offset ever cogitating essay loomed over me as I sat as withal as a statue, as my fingers nervously poised over the intimidating buttons on my laptop keyboard. Where would I begin? Where would I end? Nerve wracking thoughts filled my mind as I fretted over the seemingly impossible journey on which I was about to embark."

Reflective essays may seem simple on the surface, just they can be a existent stumbling cake if you're non quite sure how to go nigh them. In uncomplicated terms, reflective essays found a critical examination of a life experience and, with the correct guidance, they're non also challenging to put together. A reflective essay is similar to other essays in that it needs to exist easily understood and well structured, merely the content is more alike to something personal like a diary entry.

In this guide, nosotros explore in detail how to write a great reflective essay, including what makes a good structure and some advice on the writing procedure. We've fifty-fifty thrown in an example reflective essay to inspire you too, making this the ultimate guide for anyone needing reflective essay help.

The format

In a cogitating essay, a writer primarily examines his or her life experiences, hence the term 'reflective'. The purpose of writing a reflective essay is to provide a platform for the author to not only recount a detail life experience, only to too explore how he or she has changed or learned from those experiences. Reflective writing can be presented in various formats, only you'll most often come across information technology in a learning log format or diary entry. Diary entries in detail are used to convey how the author'southward thoughts have adult and evolved over the grade of a detail menses.

The format of a reflective essay may change depending on the target audience. Reflective essays can exist academic, or may characteristic more broadly every bit a part of a full general piece of writing for a magazine, for instance. For class assignments, while the presentation format tin vary, the purpose generally remains the same: tutors aim to inspire students to think deeply and critically about a particular learning feel or fix of experiences. Hither are some typical examples of reflective essay formats that yous may have to write:

A focus on personal growth:
A type of reflective essay often used by tutors as a strategy for helping students to larn how to analyse their personal life experiences to promote emotional growth and evolution. The essay gives the student a meliorate understanding of both themselves and their behaviours.

A focus on the literature:
This kind of essay requires students to provide a summary of the literature, later which it is practical to the student's own life experiences.

What do I write about?

As y'all go well-nigh deciding on the content of your essay, you need to go on in listen that a cogitating essay is highly personal and aimed at engaging the reader or target audition. And there'southward much more to a reflective essay than just recounting a story. You need to exist able to reflect (more on this later) on your experience by showing how it influenced your subsequent behaviours and how your life has been particularly inverse every bit a result.

As a starting betoken, y'all might want to think well-nigh some important experiences in your life that accept really impacted you lot, either positively, negatively, or both. Some typical reflection essay topics include: a real-life experience, an imagined experience, a special object or place, a person who had an influence on you, or something you have watched or read. If you are writing a reflective essay as role of an academic exercise, chances are your tutor will ask you to focus on a particular episode – such as a time when you had to make an important determination – and reflect on what the outcomes were. Note also, that the aftermath of the experience is especially important in a reflective essay; miss this out and y'all will simply be storytelling.

Reflection

It sounds obvious, simply the cogitating process forms the core of writing this type of essay, so it's important yous go it right from the offset. Yous need to really think about how the personal feel you have called to focus on impacted or changed you. Use your memories and feelings of the experience to determine the implications for you on a personal level.

Once you've chosen the topic of your essay, it's really important you study it thoroughly and spend a lot of time trying to recollect about it vividly. Write down everything you can remember about it, describing information technology as clearly and fully every bit you lot can. Keep your five senses in listen as you practise this, and be sure to use adjectives to describe your experience. At this stage, you tin simply make notes using curt phrases, but you need to ensure that you're recording your responses, perceptions, and your experience of the event(southward).

Once y'all've successfully emptied the contents of your retentiveness, you lot need to start reflecting. A cracking way to do this is to choice out some reflection questions which volition help yous call up deeper about the impact and lasting effects of your experience. Hither are some useful questions that you can consider:

– What have you learned about yourself every bit a consequence of the experience?

– Have you developed considering of it? How?

– Did it have any positive or negative begetting on your life?

– Looking dorsum, what would you take done differently?

– Why do you lot think you made the detail choices that you did? Do you lot call back these were the right choices?

– What are your thoughts on the experience in general? Was it a useful learning feel? What specific skills or perspectives did you acquire equally a result?

These signpost questions should help kick-start your reflective process. Remember, request yourself lots of questions is primal to ensuring that you recollect deeply and critically about your experiences – a skill that is at the heart of writing a bully reflective essay.

Consider using models of reflection (similar the Gibbs or Kolb cycles) before, during, and later on the learning process to ensure that you maintain a loftier standard of assay. For instance, before you really get stuck into the procedure, consider questions such as: what might happen (regarding the experience)? Are in that location any possible challenges to keep in heed? What noesis is needed to be all-time prepared to approach the feel? And then, as you're planning and writing, these questions may be useful: what is happening within the learning process? Is the process working out as expected? Am I dealing with the accompanying challenges successfully? Is there anything that needs to be done additionally to ensure that the learning process is successful? What am I learning from this? By adopting such a framework, you'll be ensuring that you lot are keeping tabs on the reflective procedure that should underpin your work.

The plan

Here's a very useful tip: although y'all may feel well prepared with all that fourth dimension spent reflecting in your arsenal, practice non, start writing your essay until you accept worked out a comprehensive, well-rounded plan. Your writing will be so much more than coherent, your ideas conveyed with structure and clarity, and your essay will likely reach higher marks.

This is an specially important step when yous're tackling a reflective essay – at that place tin exist a tendency for people to get a footling 'lost' or disorganised as they recount their life experiences in an erratic and often unsystematic manner every bit it is a topic so close to their hearts. But if yous develop a thorough outline (this is the aforementioned as a 'program') and ensure you stick to it like Christopher Columbus to a map, you should do just fine every bit you embark on the ultimate footstep of writing your essay. If you need farther disarming on how important planning is, we've summarised the cardinal benefits of creating a detailed essay outline below:

• An outline allows you to institute the basic details that y'all plan to incorporate into your paper – this is great for helping you pick out any superfluous data, which tin can be removed entirely to make your essay succinct and to the point.

• Recall of the outline as a map – you lot plan in advance the points you wish to navigate through and talk over in your writing. Your work will more than likely have a clear through line of thought, making it easier for the reader to understand. It'll besides assistance you avert missing out any key data, and having to go dorsum at the end and try to fit information technology in.

• Information technology's a real fourth dimension-saver! Considering the outline essentially serves as the essay's 'skeleton', yous'll save a tremendous amount of time when writing as you lot'll be really familiar with what y'all want to say. As such, y'all'll exist able to classify more time to editing the newspaper and ensuring it'due south of a loftier standard.

Now you're familiar with the benefits of using an outline for your reflective essay, it is essential that yous know how to craft one. It can exist considerably dissimilar from other typical essay outlines, mostly considering of the varying subjects. But what remains the same, is that you need to start your outline by drafting the introduction, body and determination. More on this beneath.

Introduction
As is the example with all essays, your reflective essay must brainstorm inside an introduction that contains both a hook and a thesis argument. The point of having a 'hook' is to grab the attending of your audience or reader from the very beginning. You lot must portray the exciting aspects of your story in the initial paragraph so that you stand the best chances of holding your reader's involvement. Refer dorsum to the opening quote of this commodity – did it grab your attention and encourage you to read more than? The thesis statement is a brief summary of the focus of the essay, which in this case is a particular feel that influenced you significantly. Remember to requite a quick overview of your experience – don't give too much information away or yous gamble your reader becoming disinterested.

Body
Next upward is planning the torso of your essay. This can be the hardest office of the entire newspaper; it'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to waffle and repeat yourself both in the plan and in the actual writing. Have you ever tried recounting a story to a friend only for them to tell y'all to 'cut the long story brusk'? They key hither is to put enough of time and try into planning the body, and yous tin can depict on the following tips to assistance you practise this well:

Attempt adopting a chronological approach. This ways working through everything you want to touch upon as it happened in time. This kind of approach will ensure that your work is systematic and coherent. Keep in mind that a reflective essay doesn't necessarily have to exist linear, but working chronologically will prevent you from providing a haphazard recollection of your experience. Lay out the important elements of your experience in a timeline – this will and then help you clearly run across how to piece your narrative together.

Ensure the body of your reflective essay is well focused and contains appropriate critique and reflection. The trunk should not only summarise your experience, information technology should explore the impact that the experience has had on your life, as well as the lessons that you have learned as a result. The emphasis should more often than not be on reflection equally opposed to summation. A cogitating posture will non only provide readers with insight on your experience, information technology'll highlight your personality and your power to deal with or suit to particular situations.

Conclusion
In the conclusion of your reflective essay, you should focus on bringing your piece together by providing a summary of both the points made throughout, and what you lot have learned as a result. Try to include a few points on why and how your attitudes and behaviours have been inverse. Consider also how your graphic symbol and skills take been affected, for case: what conclusions can be drawn about your problem-solving skills? What can exist concluded about your arroyo to specific situations? What might you do differently in similar situations in the future? What steps accept y'all taken to consolidate everything that you have learned from your feel? Go along in mind that your tutor volition be looking out for prove of reflection at a very high standard.

Congratulations – you at present have the tools to create a thorough and accurate programme which should put you in good stead for the ultimate phase indeed of any essay, the writing process.

Writing your essay

Equally with all written assignments, sitting downwardly to put pen to newspaper (or more probable fingers to keyboard) tin can be daunting. But if you have put in the time and endeavor fleshing out a thorough plan, yous should be well prepared, which will make the writing process as smooth as possible. The following points should also assist ease the writing procedure:

– To get a feel for the tone and format in which your writing should exist, read other typically cogitating pieces in magazines and newspapers, for instance.

– Don't think too much near how to outset your commencement sentence or paragraph; just commencement writing and y'all tin can ever come back later to edit anything you're non keen on. Your first draft won't necessarily exist your best essay writing work merely it's of import to remember that the earlier yous start writing, the more time yous will have to keep reworking your paper until information technology's perfect. Don't shy away from using a complimentary-flow method, writing and recording your thoughts and feelings on your experiences as and when they come up to heed. But brand sure you stick to your plan. Your plan is your roadmap which will ensure your writing doesn't meander too far off course.

– For every point you make about an experience or upshot, support it by describing how yous were directly impacted, using specific every bit opposed to vague words to convey exactly how y'all felt.

– Write using the get-go-person narrative, ensuring that the tone of your essay is very personal and cogitating of your character.

– If you demand to, refer dorsum to our notes earlier on creating an outline. As you lot work through your essay, nowadays your thoughts systematically, remembering to focus on your key learning outcomes.

– Consider starting your introduction with a short chestnut or quote to grasp your readers' attention, or other engaging techniques such as flashbacks.

– Choose your vocabulary carefully to properly convey your feelings and emotions. Remember that reflective writing has a descriptive component and then must accept a broad range of adjectives to draw from. Avoid vague adjectives such equally 'okay' or 'nice' as they don't actually offer much insight into your feelings and personality. Be more specific – this volition make your writing more engaging.

– Be honest with your feelings and opinions. Remember that this is a cogitating task, and is the i place you lot can freely acknowledge – without whatsoever repercussions – that you failed at a particular chore. When assessing your essay, your tutor will wait a deep level of reflection, non a simple review of your experiences and emotion. Showing deep reflection requires y'all to movement beyond the descriptive. Be extremely disquisitional virtually your experience and your response to information technology. In your evaluation and analysis, ensure that you brand value judgements, incorporating ideas from outside the experience you had to guide your assay. Retrieve that you tin be honest about your feelings without writing in a direct way. Apply words that work for you and are aligned with your personality.

– Once yous've finished learning most and reflecting on your feel, consider asking yourself these questions: what did I particularly value from the experience and why? Looking back, how successful has the process been? Retrieve about your opinions immediately later on the experience and how they differ now, so that you can evaluate the difference between your immediate and current perceptions. Asking yourself such questions will help you accomplish reflective writing effectively and efficiently.

– Don't shy away from using a multifariousness of punctuation. It helps keeps your writing dynamic! Doesn't it?

– If you actually desire to awaken your reader'south imagination, yous can use imagery to create a vivid picture of your experiences.

– Ensure that you highlight your turning bespeak, or what we like to call your "Aha!" moment. Without this moment, your resulting feelings and thoughts aren't as valid and your statement non every bit strong.

– Don't forget to keep reiterating the lessons y'all have learned from your experience.

A further tip – using wider sources

Although a reflective piece of writing is focused on personal experience, it's important you draw on other sources to demonstrate your agreement of your experience from a theoretical perspective. It'll evidence a level of analysis – and a standard of reliability in what you're claiming – if you're likewise able to validate your piece of work confronting other perspectives that you notice. Recollect about possible sources, similar newspapers, surveys, books and even journal articles. Mostly, the additional sources you decide to include in your piece of work are highly dependent on your field of written report. Analysing a broad range of sources, will show that you have read widely on your field of study area, that you have nuanced insight into the bachelor literature on the subject of your essay, and that you accept considered the broader implications of the literature for your essay. The incorporation of other sources into your essay as well helps to show that y'all are enlightened of the multi-dimensional nature of both the learning and problem-solving process.

Case reflective essay

If you lot want some inspiration for writing, take a look at our example of a brusk reflective essay, which can serve as a useful starting betoken for you when you set out to write your own.

Some final notes to recollect

To recap, the fundamental to writing a reflective essay is demonstrating what lessons yous have taken abroad from your experiences, and why and how you have been shaped by these lessons.

The cogitating thinking process begins with you – you must consciously make an endeavor to identify and examine your own thoughts in relation to a particular feel. Don't hesitate to explore any prior knowledge or experience of the topic, which volition assist you identify why you lot take formed sure opinions on the discipline. Recollect that central to reflective essay writing is the exam of your attitudes, assumptions and values, so be upfront almost how you feel. Reflective writing tin can be quite therapeutic, helping you identify and analyze your strengths and weaknesses, specially in terms of any knowledge gaps that you may take. It's a pretty good way of improving your disquisitional thinking skills, too. It enables you to adopt an introspective posture in analysing your experiences and how you learn/make sense of them.

If you are still having difficulties with starting the writing process, why not try mind-mapping which will assist yous to structure your thinking and ideas, enabling you lot to produce a coherent slice. Creating a mind map will ensure that your argument is written in a very systematic fashion that will be easy for your tutor to follow. Here'southward a recap of the contents of this article, which also serves as a way to create a mind map:

1. Place the topic yous volition exist writing on.

2. Note down any ideas that are related to the topic and if you lot want to, try cartoon a diagram to link together whatever topics, theories, and ideas.

iii. Allow your ideas to flow freely, knowing that you will e'er take time to edit your work.

iv. Consider how your ideas are continued to each other, then begin the writing process.

And finally, keep in heed that although there are descriptive elements in a reflective essay, nosotros can't emphasise enough how crucial information technology is that your work is critical, analytical, and adopts a reflective posture in terms of your experience and the lessons you have learned from it.

Proficient luck!

Struggling to write your reflective essay?

Even with all the advice in the world, essay writing can all the same be extremely challenging for some. Our academics know how to construct the perfect reflective essay to help you lot attain the results yous need. They'll provide you with a model essay for you to study and build upon so that you're ready for your submission engagement.

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