Sharing your experience ' ' '

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Sharing your experience . . . From Reading to
Writing In their essays, Emerson and Thoreau
reflect upon some basic truths about life that
they derived from personal experience. Emersons
words, Whoso would be a man, must be a
nonconformist, still prod us to examine our
lives today.
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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 into the writers action.
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B a s i c s i n a B o x
Reflective Essay at a Glance
RUBRIC
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
To find ideas for your essay

• Try listing some memorable experiences. You might
  look through family photograph albums to help jog
  your memory.
• Make a list of people who inspire you. What have
  these people done to earn your admiration? Jot
  down some notes about an incident from each
  persons life that shows his or her special
  qualities.

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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? 2. 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 as you can.
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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. How can you encourage your readers to
apply the meaning of the experience to their own
lives?
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Writing Your Reflective Essay
A writers material is what he cares
about. John Gardner
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Writing Your Reflective Essay

• 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 problems youll need to address later.

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Writing Your Reflective Essay

• Organize Your Essay
• Start your paper with an account of your
  experience and then explain its significance.
  From that point, go on to discuss the larger
  lesson about life that the experience has taught
  you. Or, begin with the larger lesson you want to
  share with your readers and then describe the
  experience that helped you learn this lesson.

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Writing Your Reflective Essay

• 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 have overlooked.

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Writing Your Reflective Essay
Target Skill AVOIDING CLICHÉS Make sure that
none of your images are clichés, expressions that
were once fresh and powerful but have since been
overused.
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Writing Your Reflective Essay
Target Skill POSSESSIVES AND PLURALS As you
revise your reflective essay, be sure that you
have formed plurals and possessives correctly.