Lecture Essay writing & presentation skills - Lecture 18: Reflective essay

The main contents of the chapter consist of the following: What is personal essay? definition of the personal essay, subjects for the personal essay, the personal essay as a personal narrative, the personal essay as a personal opinion, how to choose a topic, resources for writing personal essays, steps for thinking about the personal essay.

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Lecture 18

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Recap

- What is Personal Essay?

Definition of the Personal Essay * Subjects for the Personal Essay

- The Personal Essay as a Personal Narrative - The Personal Essay as a Personal Opinion

How to Choose a Topic

— Make the Most of Life Experiences Resources for Writing Personal Essays

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Sharing your experience From Reading to Writing

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Sharing your experience

Like Emerson and Thoreau, you, too, have experiences from which you learn important lessons A reflective essay describes a personal experience

and explores its significance

Autobiographies, letters, and memoirs often include reflective writing that gives insight

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Basics in a Box Reflective Essay at a Glance personal experience Standards for Writing

A successful reflective essay should:

‘ be written In the first person

‘ describe an important experience in your life or in the life of someone you admire

’ use figurative language, dialogue,

sensory details, or other techniques to re-create the experience for the reader - explain the significance of the event

‘ make an observation about life based

on the experience

‘ encourage readers to think about the significance of the experience in light of their own lives

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Writing Your Reflective Essay

Prewriting

To find ideas for your essay

¢ Try listing some memorable experiences You might look’ through family

photograph albums to help jog your

memory

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Planning Your Reflective Essay

1 Think about your experience

Why do you remember this experience more clearly than others?

What different emotions did you go through during the experience?

Did your emotions change?

3 Explore the significance

What is the significance of your experience? What is the most obvious meaning to you? What else did your experience teach you?

Keep exploring to uncover as many levels of meaning

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Planning Your Reflective Essay

3 Decide on the scope of your essay

Will you dwell on one example in-depth or relate several events to create the impression

you want?

4 Decide on the message you want to convey

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Drafting

A writer’s material is what he cares about

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Drafting

Begin Writing

¢ You might write about your experience as though you were writing a journal entry Or, you may want to begin your draft by trying out a variety of ideas Let your ideas flow even though you sense

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Drafting

Organize Your Essay

¢ Start your paper with an account of your experience and then explain — its Significance

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Drafting

Elaborate on Ideas

¢ Precise, vivid language will help you

convey the lesson about life you want to explain

¢ After you write a rough draft of your whole essay, set It aside for a while before you go back to revise it Taking a fresh look will help you see problems that you may

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Revising

Target Skill

AVOIDING CLICHES

Make sure that none of your images are

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Editing and Proofreading

Target Skill

POSSESSIVES AND PLURALS

As you revise your reflective essay, be sure that you have _ formed plurals and

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How to Write an Reflective Essay?

- In a reflective essay, you need to express your thoughts and emotions § about certain events or phenomena

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Steps for Writing an Reflective

Essay

Step # 1: Think of an event that could

become the topic of your essay

since it Is going to be a reflective

essay, ask yourself:

> How you feel about this event?

> How it affected (did not affect) your life and why?

This will help you formulate a thesis that will be the focal point of your

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Steps for Writing an Reflective Essay

Step # 2: Make a mind map

Write down your thesis and draw a circle around it Now identify your main arguments and ideas, that will Support it and help the reader follow the evolution of your thoughts and experiences, group them into paragraphs, and connect them with

“rays” to your central circle

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Essay

Step # 3: Write a strong opening

paragraph Your introduction must be

eye catching, so that the reader

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Essay

Step # 4: State your supporting

arguments, ideas and examples in

the body paragraphs

Emphasize only one point or

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Essay

Step # 5: In the first sentence of the conclusion, briefly summarize your thoughts to date

Think about what you have learned and how your experience might be useful to others

Finish your essay with a symbolic question to your readers about how they might act in a similar situation

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Topic Selection

Since composing a reflective essay presupposes that you will write about a personal experience, you can

choose whatever event you like

It is almost like a diary, where you write down your

thoughts about some significant happening in your life

It can be a book, an event, a person — the main thing

is to state your opinion

For example, you can write about:

— atrip to an exotic place;

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Topic Selection

-—a book that you have recently read; - conflict in the Middle East;

- a certain personality;

-—the solving of a difficult problem;

-a successfully completed research project;

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Key Points to Consider

- Your introductory paragraph could partially disclose or give a hint about the conclusions In your essay

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- Since a reflective essay Is particularly based on personal experience, It Is

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Usage of one or more quotations in the introduction can make your writing more

authoritative

In most reflective essays, apart from describing what went right, you may also describe what went wrong, or how some experience could

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Dos

‘ Do write your ideas in a descriptive

manner

— Your thoughts must be stated very clearly, so that your readers understand exactly what you wanted to Say

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Dos - Do follow’ precisely the classical structure: — an Introduction — main body paragraphs, and — a conclusion

- Do keep in mind, that you should write your essay basing not only on personal

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Don'ts

Don’t be too personal

- Despite the fact that a reflective essay Is based on personal experience, remember that you are writing an academic essay, not a

letter to a friend

Don’t try to cram all your experiences into one essay;

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Don ts

‘ Don’t try to write everything at once

- Compose a ‘mind map’ and create an outline that gives a clear direction to your writing

- Don’t make your essay a free-flowing analysis of all your unstructured thoughts, insights and ideas

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Common Mistakes

: The inclusion of too much _ personal information in your essay

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Common Mistakes

- Ignoring the structure of an essay

— This results in a disorganized incoherent text which the reader will find hard to comprehend

- Being too informal

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Example of Expository Essay

Information Pressure:

ignorance isa

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Introduction Paragraph

Come to think of it, nowadays some people live under pretty harsh conditions Their physical and mental health is constantly

under threat Bad ecology, overpopulated

megalopolises, economic’ crises, large

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1 Supporting Details

| can remember the days, when there was no TV and

Internet at my place | wasn’t much informed about what was going on in the world, about all the scandals, accidents and

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Most media organizations basically focus on negative facts There IS even an appropriate term for this phenomenon — pathogenic journalism Why would one want to Know about how much money a famous politician has earned? What are the hidden reasons for another celebrity divorce? How many women and children were killed during the last terroristic act in the Middle East? How does reporting the downside of a well-known official’s private life sell more copies? Nevertheless, this and other information flows through people’s minds every day, month by month But do they really need to know so much

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| am sure that there are strong reasons to establish and promote publishing houses, that focus only on good, or at least neutral, news One may find out that news about, for example, cultural and scientific events can be very interesting, if presented properly For instance, remember how NASA supported the informational campaign about the rover "Curiosity” when it was launched towards Mars A computer game was created, the main goal of which was to land the rover on the Red planet’s surface, and the Internet was filled with funny fan-art pictures and stories on the subject Or how a team of scientists assigned specific tones to each radioactive isotope and created a program, that allowed users to literally

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3 Supporting Details (Cont.)

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4 Supporting Details (Cont.)

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Conclusion

As for me, I’ve quit that news agency job and dedicated all the free time to my friends and hobbies These are the best ways to overcome the stresses of modern life It also turned out that limiting the amounts of

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Summary

e Sharing your experience

—- Emerson and Thoreau

¢ Basics In a BOX

¢ Writing Your Reflective Essay - Planning Your Reflective Essay

- Steps for Writing an Reflective Essay - Topic Selection

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References

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