10 Tips for Writing Best Personal Reflection Essays

Reflective essays are widely considered to be the easiest type of essay to write. This type of rumor might arise for a variety of reasons. Many individuals, however, still find these essays difficult to write because they do not know the proper approach, or as I prefer to call it, the proper structural framework, in which to write them. A reflective essay resembles a memoir in which a person shares strong thoughts about a particular topic.

Reflective essays are typically considered casual, however, they may be required to be written in a formal manner in some circumstances, such as when delivering a viewpoint to a group of corporate clients. However, when a student writes a reflective essay, he or she should do it in a classroom setting where the teacher gives a proper topic.

This style of essay writing helps people gain confidence in their ability to express themselves on any subject and develops critical thinking in a variety of professions. However, I am aware that many people regard writing a reflective essay to be a mindless activity. As a result, I'll go through 10 golden pointers for producing the finest personal reflection essays in this post.

1 – Come up with an event

In most cases, your teacher will provide you with a topic for your reflective essay, but you can also choose one yourself. Whatever your topic, the first stage should be to brainstorm any events that spring to mind when you think about it, whether from your own life or from someone else's. An article on women's empowerment, for example, may remind you of any time when your rights as a woman, or the rights of your female relatives and friends, have been violated. Once you've compiled a list of these occurrences, you could choose to use one of them as the starting point for your essay, something along the lines of, "I recall this one occasion when a professor refused to let me write," for example.

 

2 – Form arguments

It's really simple to choose one point of contention and keep circling back to it because you can't think of anything else. This is especially true in reflection essays, where individuals are at a loss for words. That is why, before intending to write your complete essay, I recommend that you first jot out all of your reasons on a piece of paper. This way, while you compose the essay, you'll know what arguments to place where and won't feel like you're bouncing from one point to the next just to return to the prior argument.

 

3 – Decide your personal limit

Reflection essays are unmistakably a personal expression of viewpoints. As a writer, you'll almost certainly want to express your own beliefs, and I'll go through how to do that next, but before we do that, I recommend that you first determine how much personal propaganda you're prepared to do for the sake of this reflection essay. You may have brainstormed events, occurrences, occasions, and scenarios that you may use as examples to show your thesis in the previous phases, but you may feel that they are too personal or sensitive to reveal in an essay. So, in this third phase, rule out any topics you don't want to discuss, and remember that your life is entirely up to you, and no one, whether a teacher or a guide, can compel you to discuss something you don't want to discuss.

 

4 – Deduce the arguments.

In step two, I encouraged you to create an argument, which is just a list of everything you want to say. However, at this phase, you must select particular arguments from that wide category of ideas. You will have a clear and definite notion of how you want to organize the reflection essay after doing so. When I say deduce, I'm referring to the process of formulating a decisive argument that will serve as the topic sentence for each paragraph of your essay. Because reflective essays do not have a fixed paragraph structure and limit, and because this is the most frequently asked question concerning reflective essays, you will be able to determine the number of paragraphs your essay should have at this stage.

 

5 – Co relate arguments with examples

Now that you have a list of particular arguments and a separate list of examples, which are the cases you mentioned in the first phase, the next step is to link them together. You must choose at least one example for each argument. If your argument is more essential than the rest, you can describe your conclusion in two or three instances.

6 – Limit your examples

This may seem counterintuitive to my previous ideas, but it's a common error individuals make when writing personal reflection essays. You should always keep a word restriction in mind while discussing or narrating an incident or narrative to make a point. If you ramble on and on detailing what happened, your audience may lose track of the main point you were attempting to convey by delivering the tale. As a result, you must ensure that all of your samples have a clear head and tail, as well as a low word count.

 

7 – Be true to your thoughts

Remember how I said I'd assist you in developing your own unique ideas? Yes, this is how it should be done. When you first hear about a topic, there must be an inner voice inside you that softly communicates its point of view, but it is quickly inundated with the many viewpoints of so many other people who are also talking about it or have already discussed it in earlier articles. This flood usually blindfolds your sight and prevents you from hearing your own thoughts. To avoid this, I recommend that you avoid reading other essays on the same topic, discussing it with other students or friends, and conducting research on the subject. I realize it's not usual, but I'm asking you to hold off on doing these things until you've heard yourself speak and written down all of your own views and opinions in a notepad.

 

8 – Research

Yes, yes, yes. It appears to be contradictory once more, yet it is not. After you've finished recording your own ideas, you should investigate what others have been talking about. You may now discuss it with your friends, classmates, and professors. You should also read what others have said about the same subject in earlier writings. This type of study will no longer affect your judgment because you have written down your own opinions. In reality, this study will now assist you in categorizing different thoughts into two categories: for and against your point of view.

 

9 – Prepare for both sides of the coin

A highly opinionated essay, a personal reflection essay frequently discusses the opinions of the one individual who is writing the essay. However, we may add to it the broader surrounding thoughts that others have been discussing to make it even more classic. This is why, in the previous phase, I urged you to conduct research. Now, this is tough since you don't want this to become a big narrative essay, so the idea is to offer each external opinion as a statement and then explain your personal perspective on it. The readers will never lose sight of what your main argument was throughout the essay if you do it this manner.

 

10 – You can write about one story too.

I bring this up as a specific topic since a lot of individuals get confused about how many examples and arguments they should include in a personal reflection essay. I'd like to point out that reflection essays are simple to write since you may choose one occurrence from your life and make it into an essay. It isn't always necessary to conduct research or compare and contrast other people's viewpoints. It might simply be that you want to discuss a recent event in your life and how it affected you.

 

I believe that these 10 tips, often known as stages, will assist you in writing an outstanding personal reflection essay. Always keep in mind that this is a simple essay to write and that you are free to express yourself in public. And that writing a personal reflection essay isn't something to be embarrassed about. Now go ahead and start brainstorming. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and encourage you to return for more.