Understanding the Reflective Essays

In any education system, reflective essays form a major part of the student’s assignments. That is because writing a reflective essay is more nuanced in terms of thinking than an ordinary academic essay. It not only tests the students’ knowledge but, explores their deeper and more practical application and understanding of the same knowledge.

An ordinary academic essay requires adequate theoretical knowledge of the given topic for the writer. If the writer is able to bring in examples, it still usually is written from a distant perspective. However, on the other hand, writing a reflective essay is more up for testing a student by making him think more. That is because while writing a reflective essay, the writer is able to channel many important skills that people or students tend to ignore using in their day-to-day lives as it leads to more thinking and, as the name suggests, a larger perspective based reflection on the topic bringing out the writer’s deeper understanding of the given topic.

Looking at the reflective essay technically, the writer must be able to write with a very strong composition. Since the aim of the write – up is to extricate deeper reflections from the writer on the given topic, the writer must be able to analyze everything related to the topic from a wider perspective that includes both, his theoretical understanding of the concept based on research as well as his practical experience relevant to the writing. The reflective essay requires a deeper understanding and analysis of the topic. The said analysis can be based on learning experiences from a certain academic course as well as personal experiences that could be an extension of the learning experiences that the writer might have arrived at.

The primary requirement before writing a good reflective essay is, therefore, understanding what it is that the writer has to reflect on. The key to ensure this is for the writer to sit and think deeply about what she has to reflect on along the lines of how she feels about a certain topic, how and why it might or might not affect her. The analysis here has to be more personal than academic. It helps the writer in thinking more critically from a wider perspective.

In a reflective essay, the writer does need to build the write – up on facts but, that is after the writer has used her insight to think about the given topic. After having thought about the topic insightfully, the writer must then summarize the insight and frame that as the central thesis of the essay, identifying the arguments supporting the thesis.  After the thesis, the following body paragraphs must include the necessary facts to substantiate the reflective parts of the essay.

Towards the end, the writer may conclude the essay briefly restating the thesis. As it is a reflective piece, the writer may end in a question asking for other reflections or points of view that the readers might have.