Writing A Great Personal Reflective Essay: Things To Know
A personal reflective essay is different from most other essays. The tone is different. It can be written in the first person and can be written like a journal entry. You are actually drawing on personal experience and trying to find meaning in it. You can choose just about any topic. Most people choose an event they may have attended or a film they saw. Another suggestion may be a book they read. The format of the essay can be the same as most other essays with an introduction, body and conclusion. In order to write a great personal reflective essay, there are some questions that you need to ask yourself.
- What were your feelings about the topic?
- Did the topic affect me? If so, why?
- Why didn’t the topic affect you, if it didn’t?
Just like in a journal, all you are trying to do is tell the audience how you feel. It isn’t really necessary to even state any facts in the essay unless you are trying to use them to explain what you are trying to say. When you are explaining to your readers how you feel, you want to try to be descriptive. You want your audience to feel like they are there with you. After you have described your topic, you want try to explain to your reader how the topic affected you or if it even affected you at all. The reader wants to know if the topic allowed you to grow in some way. They want to know if it changed you as a person and if it did, they want to know how.
In the conclusion, you want to paraphrase your topic sentence. Tell the audience again how you felt about the topic. Then you may want to leave your reader with a question. Maybe you can ask them if they feel the same way. Another thing you may want to do is leave the reader with a challenge. You may want to challenge the reader to try something for themselves and see if they feel the same way. Use the same techniques you would use in a descriptive essay to put your readers in the moment with you. Try to make them see what you saw and they very likely will feel the same way you felt.