What is a Reflection Paper?
Reflection papers are essays that require students to express their opinions on different topics. A reflection paper mainly analyses and reflects upon how an experience, a book, lecture or film influenced your thoughts and opinions about a given subject.
Unlike most academic papers that require evidence-backed discussions, a reflective essay allows you the freedom to express your personal thoughts to persuade readers. The essay primarily seeks to gauge your personal experiences and thoughts.
A reflection paper is a type of personal essay whereby the writer examines a topic through the lens of their unique perspective. The essays are more subjective about the topics than academic essays and use figurative language. Besides, they do not need citations or references as academic papers.
The goal of a reflective essay is to explore and share the thoughts, experiences and perspectives of the author. The essays are often written as part of college applications and cover letters, allowing the writer to discuss their background and show how those experiences enabled them to become ideal candidates.
While reflective essays vary greatly from academic assignments, they may have an academic angle to them. For example, students may be asked to watch films or visit museum exhibitions and write reflective essays about the themes explored in those works. The essays could also be personal writing pieces.
Types of Reflection Papers
A reflection paper can take two forms; experiential and textual. An experiential essay is an analysis of a personal experience or observation. The paper requires you to summarize and highlight the underlying elements that support your analysis of the experience.
The other type of reflective papers, textual essays, analyses a written text from an article, essay, report or book. Then, the author should use specific quotations from the text to back up your opinion, interpretation and analysis of the material.
Tips for Writing a Powerful Reflection Paper
Although a reflection paper mainly revolves around sharing your experiences, there are guidelines that you must follow when crafting them. The following are the key guidelines for writing a good reflective essay.
Choose an interesting topic
An interesting topic is important for both the writer and the readers. That will make the task of writing the paper more fun and easier. Besides, an enjoyable topic will also make the essay more engaging. However, you can also decide to reflect on a serious topic but, with a bit of light-hearted moments. In some cases, you may be given a range of topics to choose from. Nonetheless, you should go for something that you will enjoy writing about.
Choosing a suitable topic for a reflection paper requires proper thought and imagination. While it is not always easy, having a few ideas up your sleeve could make all the difference. One of the tricks you can pursue is free-writing. The process entails writing whatever you have in mind for a short period of time. You can simply list down different ideas then, get down to choosing a suitable one from the listed topics.
You can also try making mind maps to come up with an ideal topic for your reflective essay. A mind map is a diagram showing the relationships between events, ideas and other words relevant to the central theme. For example, a mind map for a film could branch into words such as fiction, non-fiction, digital… Each of those words could also branch into sub topics, showing how deep you can go about exploring different subjects.
Real life experiences are usually the best way for coming up with reflection paper topics. Think of an experience that had a profound impact on your daily routine or world view. However, you can also focus on smaller and less-significant parts of your life. Remember you will not be describing experiences but, exploring how they shape your life.
Keep the information relevant
A typical reflection paper usually ranges between 250 words to 800 words long. The short length of the paper is one of the reasons why you should only focus on the relevant information. Avoid lengthy summaries or vague stories so you can put across all your points in the allocated word count.
Maintain a professional tone
Reflective essays mainly focus on the writer’s personal opinions and thoughts but, you should remember the paper is an academic piece. Therefore, do not be too focused on your own opinions that you forget the basis of the paper. You are free to spice up the content to make it fun but, it must also include a professional tone that speaks to the paper’s academic orientation.
Reflective Essay Outline
Like other academic papers, a reflective paper also has a specific outline that you should follow when crafting the essay. Knowing the outline will enable you to present your ideas in a logical manner that also makes it easier for the reader to follow. Here’s a guide for writing a reflective essay outline.
- Introduction
The introduction of a reflection essay should comprise a hook and a thesis statement. The hook is the sentence that grabs the attention of the reader and makes them want to keep reading. It could be an unexpected fact, intriguing statistic, a surprising observation or a question that gets the reader’s mind thinking. The thesis statement is a concise statement introducing the readers to the topic of the essay. It clearly spells out the topic and gives readers context for the remaining parts of your reflection paper.
- Body Paragraphs
The body paragraphs are where you should explore the experience that is being reflected upon. You may compare experiences, describe scenes and your emotions, recount interactions and contrast it with any expectations that you have had before. There is usually no required number of body paragraphs for your reflective paper unless you are writing for a specific assignment. However, you should consider the specified word count when constructing the body paragraphs.
- Conclusion
In the last section of the essay, tie up any loose ends from the body paragraphs. You should also mention the thesis statement by either restating or paraphrasing it. The conclusion should give the reader a sense of completion by integrating one or two final thoughts. However, the thoughts expressed therein should reflect statements discussed in the body paragraphs, without introducing anything new. The conclusion should also clearly share how the experiences or events discussed affected you.
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