Reflective essay writing is different from other academic writings like an argumentative essay in terms of structure and organization of content in the essay. But still, there are some common rules apply on all academic essays. Main sections included in the reflective essay are Introduction, Body and Conclusion. Even topic of the reflective essay is different you have to put something of your personal experience like ‘visit to a place’ and reflective essay on this topic requires you to write your experience and your reflective thinking while you were visiting the place. This article aims to describe how three main sections of essay structure needs to be added in a reflective essay and here is the description of each section;
Introduction
Like many other pieces of writings, the reflective essay also starts with an introduction. In this section you need to introduce your topic i.e. visit a place, so you need to introduce the place or how you planned to visit that place. Further introduction section incorporates the key points of your reflective thinking on the topic that you are going to discuss in the body of the essay. Additionally, introduction section of essay can be divided into two parts;
- The hook: Capturing the attention of your reader by giving a quick view of the most interesting point of the story.
- Thesis statement: It means a brief statement about the topic like describing the influence that encouraged visiting a place.
Body
After the introduction, next part is the body of the essay and that contains the one quarter or third of the whole content of essay so it’s the most important section. This section tells that how important it is to make an outline before start writing your essay because without essay outline you might end up writing with a muddled and confused content. It cannot be guided how exactly your essay must be organized because each essay or topic has a different sequence of experience but make sure these events are placed accordingly that makes a sense for your reader and captures his/her attention. These are two basic tips to follow for writing body of your reflective essay;
- If your essay is an event or an experience then divide the event into small sub-events or activities and then place them in a chronology that perfectly makes sense for the reader.
- Next most important thing to add in the body of the essay is the impact of that event, experience, person or place on you; here I am talking about what actually reflective thinking gives you as learning from the experience.
Conclusion
This section is the finishing part of the essay that must touch the whole story but in sense of concluding the experience and its impact. Include a summary of key points with the overall learning of the reflection.
The first impression may give you a perception of a similar writing style of a reflective essay as of other academic essays but this clear description would enable you to write it as you required to write.
