Writing Workshop
Writing a Reflective Essay
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Assignment
Prewriting
Think About Purpose
Choose an Experience
Reflect on Your Subject
Gather and Record Details
Organize Your Reflective Essay
Practice and Apply
Writing a Reflective Essay
Assignment: Write a 1,500-word reflective essay
in which you explore the meaning of an important
experience.
When you have a significant experience, you
usually know it right away. You might think to
yourself, “Wow, I never saw it this way before.”
Writing a reflective essay gives you a chance to
explore how an important experience has changed
you or your ideas about life.
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Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Think About Purpose
When you write a reflective essay, your purpose
is to
• explore the meaning of
a personal experience
• examine how the
experience changed you
• tell what the experience
says about life in general
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Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Choose an Experience
Think about your most important personal
experiences:
What significant events have you
participated in or witnessed?
What unusual conditions
have you encountered?
What special concerns
have you had?
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Choose an Experience
If an experience doesn’t come
to mind right away, . . .
• read some reflective
essays or poems
• look through old yearbooks,
photos, or journals for ideas
Make sure to choose an experience you’ll
feel comfortable sharing with an audience.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Choose an Experience
The flash flooding that hit
our community last fall was
a significant, life-changing
experience I would like to
explore and share.
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Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject
Your reflective essay should
• help you examine
abstract ideas—love,
patience, courage
• lead you to a new
understanding of
your beliefs about
life and people
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject
Consider questions like these as you reflect on
your experience.
How does (or did) the experience affect me?
I experienced a sense of awe at the destructive
power of nature. This was a new feeling for me.
It is different to see a natural disaster in real life
than to watch special effects in a movie.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject
How did the experience change
my attitudes or behaviors?
Being stranded at the community
center and not being able to go
home or get in touch with my
parents gave me a new
appreciation for my home and
family.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject
What universal truth or insight
into human existence did the
experience teach me?
I learned that the most
catastrophic events can bring
out the best qualities in
people—courage, cooperation,
kindness, leadership.
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Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Recall the events that made up the experience:
Visualize each event from beginning to end.
Talk to someone else who was there.
Look through mementos—photographs,
letters, souvenirs.
Then, make a list of all the events.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Record narrative and descriptive details about
each event. These details will help you create
concrete images in the minds of your readers.
Narrative details
• relate actions, thoughts, and feelings of the
people involved in the events
I saw a young girl wade through water up to her
waist to rescue a cat from her neighbor’s porch.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Narrative details
• include dialogue, the actual words spoken by
people involved in the experience, and
interior monologue, your thoughts during
the experience
“I just hope my dog is okay,” Diego whispered to
me. “I love that dog more than anything else in
the world.”
“When will we be able to call our families?” I
wondered silently.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Descriptive details
• describe the way people look
Some of the last people to arrive at the center
had been rescued from cars or homes. Most had
been provided with dry, but ill-fitting, clothes.
They carried their own clothes in plastic sacks.
Many of them still seemed to be in shock.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Descriptive details
• describe settings of events
By this time the community center was crowded
with evacuees. There were no cots and very few
chairs. We tried to sleep on blankets on the
hardwood floor of the gymnasium, but very few
people actually slept that night. We could hear
news pouring out of radios all night long.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Gather and Record Details
Throughout your essay . . .
• maintain a balance in the events. (Don’t
spend all your time narrating just one event.)
As you narrate each event . . .
• describe your thoughts and feelings to hint at
the meaning of the experience
In your conclusion . . .
• state the significance of the experience
• connect the experience to abstract ideas
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Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay
Arrange the events in chronological order—the
order in which they occurred.
What
Happened
First
What
Happened
Second
What
Happened
Third
. . . and
so on
You might want to vary the chronological order by
using flashbacks and flash-forwards.
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay
Within chronological order, you can use other
organizational patterns for certain purposes.
Spatial Order
Order of Importance
• Details arranged by
location in space—
top to bottom, near
to far, and so on
• Points arranged
from most important
to least important,
or vice versa
• Good for describing
places, people, or
objects
• Good for discussing
effects and ideas
[End of Section]
Writing a Reflective Essay
Prewriting: Practice and Apply
First, choose a subject for your
reflective essay. Then
• reflect upon your subject
• gather narrative and descriptive details
• organize your essay
[End of Section]