How to Write a Reflective Paper: a Guide for University Students

How to Write a Reflective Paper

If you are a student, you usually have to write many types of academic papers. Sometimes it is hard not to confuse them and stick to the college requirements. Reflection demands to provide a connection between a student’s point of view and the topic of the paper. In other words, a student analyzes personal experience and mirrors it regarding the topic. This guide contains information about the most important things related to reflective writing a student has to present in the paper to get the desired grade. After reading, you can start writing on your own or pay someone from WriteMyPaperHub to write your paper for you with the help of essay experts. 

A Structure and Type of a Reflection to Keep in Mind

As a rule, college tutors ask their students to write a reflective essay. Unlike thesis and course papers, this type of academic writing has the most suitable length to let students reflect their ideas and sum up the general idea of the topic, including viewpoints of others. An average structure deals with three main components:

  1. introduction (introduces the problem or idea and contains a thesis statement);
  2. body (one explains a thesis statement, supporting it with a personal viewpoint and considerations of others)
  3. conclusion (restates a thesis statement and provides the final thought).

Some professors allow their students to start with a conclusion and then proceed to other parts for the sake of intrigue. A student must study college requirements not to make a mistake. It might be one page or a 5-paragraph essay. 

A professor can ask to prepare one of the two possible types of reflective writing.

The first type involves the analysis of personal experience.  A student analyzes personal choices, decisions, pros and cons of the taken action. This type fits even papers that require more pages and more complicated structure because a student, first, observes or does experiments and then provides an analysis of the outcomes.

The second type encourages students to read and reflect their opinion on a book, article, someone’s writing, or several texts. In this case, the purpose of the writing is to enlarge your scope and make you ponder on the problem of the writing, supporting your position with a personal experience or ideas.

What Professors Expect to Read in a Concrete Type of a Reflective Paper

To satisfy the requirements of the college, a student should know what a tutor expects to read in a reflective paper. The best way is to create a list of questions and proofread a paper before handing it in.

A Reflection on Experience

First of all, you need to balance the proportion of your descriptions or reporting and your points of view. Then, you should answer the following questions:

  • What is the purpose of your writing? How does this goal interact with the topic of the paper and your personal experience?
  • Who or what is the object of your writing? What information does your paper provide about the object? How do you interact with this person or organization?
  • What have you learned? How has your experience in the field changed? Did you alter your opinion about others or some notions?
  •  What would you like to change? What are the pros and cons of the conducted experiment or social intercourse? Do you plan to continue your research? Why and how?

The main goal of this type of reflection is to mirror the knowledge and experience you have got. So, you start with the description and connect it with your values, ideas, or problems you have faced in the process.

A Reflection on Reading

 When preparing a reflection on reading, a student should concentrate on one idea and provide critical analysis of it. One should answer three blocks of questions.

  • Text. What is the main idea of the text? What is its value? Is its idea somehow related to my experience, or does it contradict it? Does the content support the existing considerations of researchers or not?
  • My viewpoint. Am I knowledgeable about the topic? How and what did I learn about it? What influenced my viewpoint concerning the idea of the text? Do I agree or disagree with its thesis statement and supporting evidence?
  • Linkage. What is the connection between the presented ideas and my assumptions? Have they altered my point of view or reinforced it? What is the value of the text? How does it help me become aware of the topic problem?

The main reason for this writing is to let students learn something new and develop analytical thinking based on a personal viewpoint.

General Conclusions

To correspond to all college requirements, you are to remember the basic rules: 

  • Always stick to the point. Try to be focused on the topic and the main purpose of your writing. You need to reflect on your experience and ideas regarding the main theme of the paper. 
  • Don’t retell everything. Select the most influential facts to support your viewpoint.
  • Follow your tutor’s instructions. Decide what type of reflection you need to present and consider the above-mentioned questions.
  • Never forget about the formatting. Format the paper using appropriate spacing, margins, fonts, etc. Remember to ask about the required style for the bibliography (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).
  • Don’t retell but analyze and support your thoughts with worthy evidence.
  • Grammar and vocabulary are to fit the academic level.

As a matter of fact, low-quality performance might hurt your reputation and lower the final grade. Trust well-reputed sites only. 

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