Academic Writing: Categories
Reflective Essay: It Is Not about Mirrors, It Is All about You
What reflective essays reflect?
The first notion you probably think of on hearing about a reflective essay is your reflection. But writing a reflective essay has nothing to do with mirrors or any other things you can see yourself in. A reflective essay is all about the word reflection in its other sense in which to reflect means to report.
In other words, if a professor asks you to write a reflective essay he/she does not need you to describe your appearance. Instead, you had better to report on the experience you acquired in a certain activity or the findings of research you had to take up.
How reflective essays reflect?
The next step you should take is to find out what and how a reflective essay can reflect. Here is the brief list to help you with this question which shows that reflective essay can reflect:
- Personal experiences and their results;
- Academic activities and their outcomes;
- Research works carried out and their findings;
- Pros and cons of the experiences you obtained (personal, professional, academic);
- Limitations of the studies you carried out;
- Implications for further research on what you have already done.
It is you who reflect!
Thus, basically you can see that it is not a reflective essay but you who reflect what your professor asks you to reflect on. In short, in a reflective essay you might reflect on the whole variety of things beginning from your summer vacations or visit to a friend abroad and ending up by the research findings of your study concerning motivation factors in increasing the work productivity of construction workers…if you need to stress your mind with the latter of course.