Uncategorised

Reflective writing is increasingly becoming a part of university assignments, as well as professional practice. Reflection is highly beneficial, as it can help us improve by connecting theory to practice and showing us what we can do better next time.

While reflection is essential, it can also be challenging. It’s often difficult to know how to be critical about our personal experiences, or how to connect our practice to the appropriate theory and evidence.

To find out more about reflective writing, watch our Lightning Session on the topic, then scroll down for our top tips!

Tip 1: Be Personal

Reflection should be personal. Your reflection should deal with your own experiences/practice, rather than speaking generally about the topic. While it’s often tempting to cover big, general situations, your reflection will be stronger if you engage with specific situations you’ve encountered and how you responded. Being too vague is the enemy of good reflection!

Tip 2: Be Critical

One central aspect of academic reflection is criticality. While reflection is personal, it isn’t subjective. To write critically about your personal experience, you should drill down into the details of your situation, and connect your experience with theory and evidence. Reflection should involve discussion about your own thoughts and feelings, but it should always connect those emotions and beliefs to external sources.

Tip 3: Be Purposeful

Reflection must be purposeful. One essential aspect of reflection is the final step: the “now what?” question. Since reflection is all about improvement, it’s important to end your reflection by discussing what you’ve learned. You may consider questions like “what would I do differently next time?” or “how has my behaviour changed because of this event?” This “now what” stage is often the most difficult, but it’s central to effective reflection.

Want more help? There are many excellent models you can use to structure your reflection. We discuss one in the lightning session, but if you’d like to learn about some more complex models, this short video will explore a few of the most common.

At University, we’re told to “be critical.” We may be instructed to “critically analyse” a topic, or we might get the feedback, “needs more analysis” or “be more critical.”

But what does this mean? In non-university life, we associate being “critical” with being negative or judgemental. To criticise someone means to say bad things about them.

At University, however, being critical just means having a justified opinion. It’s not about being negative, or nit-picky. Rather, it means we need to make a point, and then back up that point with evidence.

To learn more, watch our Lightning Session, then read on!

[To skip the intros and jump right in, head to 4:00]

1. Have an Opinion

We’re often told that academic writing needs to be unbiased, and that essays shouldn’t be just our personal opinion. This is certainly true, but the reality is that academic essays should present an opinion– just one that’s backed up by the evidence. This is what academics call an “argument.” Having an “argument” is what takes our essay beyond description and into critical analysis.

Consider the following examples:

• 1. Penguins are the best kind of bird because I like them.

This is a personal opinion, and it isn’t very critical. The author thinks that penguins are best, but their only reason for thinking so is because they, personally, like penguins. We should avoid writing like this in academic essays.

• 2. Penguins are a kind of bird. They are known for being fast swimmers and for taking good care of their young.

This writing is descriptive. It tells you a few facts about penguins, but we don’t know what the author thinks about penguins. There isn’t any critical analysis here.

• 3. Penguins are the best kind of bird, because they are fast swimmers and they take good care of their young.

This writing is critical. While we certainly need more evidence (we’ll talk about evidence in the next point) the author has made a point (“penguins are the best bird”) and given a reason (their swimming speed, and how they take care of their young.) This is the basis of critical analysis.

Essentially, while essay writing can’t be just personal opinion, an opinion is an essential part of critical analysis. We must then back up that opinion with evidence, as we’ll see in point two.

2. Back up your Opinion with Evidence

Once you have an opinion, you need to back it up with evidence. In Example 1 above, the author had an opinion, but the evidence they presented wasn’t very good. Example 3 was better because the author had the exact same opinion, but they backed it up with better evidence.

What counts as evidence in an academic assignment?

• Academic books and journals
• Scientific studies
• Government (or third party) documents
• Personal experience (if writing reflectively)
• And much more!

Depending on what you’re researching, pretty much anything can be a source. For example, YouTube might not be the most reliable source for your Anatomy assignment on the bones of the hand, but if you were writing an Education essay about how teachers use the internet to engage students with science, then it might be perfect!

Once you’ve included evidence, your paragraph will look something like this:

Penguins are the best kind of bird. They are incredibly fast swimmers, with some species logging speeds of up to 25 miles per hour (Smith, 2018). They also take exceptional care of their young (Ravensburg, 2016), and have been known to adopt the abandoned young of other species (Greene, 2020). Compared to other similar birds, such as puffins, penguins are much faster and more caring, which makes them the best kind of bird.

[Note: all sources in this paragraph are fictional]

Of course, if this was a real essay, you’d need far more evidence to prove that penguins are the best kind of bird. The paragraph does, however, illustrate how to state your opinion, then back it up with evidence.

Any more questions? We know this article has only scratched the surface, so feel free to email us at asc@dundee.ac.uk if you have more questions.

Structure is crucial to essay writing, but it’s often overlooked. Taking some time to plan and structure your essay will pay dividends many times over.

Good structure allows you to show off your content to maximum effect. On the other hand, weak structure means that strong content isn’t presented as effectively as it might be, meaning that you won’t necessarily get the mark your research deserves.

When thinking about structure, you need to consider two things in particular: the overall structure of the essay and the paragraph structure within the essay. For advice on both aspects, watch the recording of our Lightning Session, and then scroll down for some more handy tips to get you started.

[To skip the intros, jump to 2:48]

Here are some quick tips to get you started thinking about good essay structure.

1. Always have the destination in mind.

When you begin writing, you should already know the conclusion you’re working towards. While this conclusion may evolve as you write, having a broad sense of the argument you’re working towards allows you to present your ideas in a more logical and cohesive order.

2. Always make a plan.

Following on from the previous point, the best way to get to your destination is to plan your journey in advance. Plans can come in many different shapes and forms – some people like to plan in detail, setting out each of the points or paragraphs they want to include, while others prefer a more broad overview, perhaps in the form of a mind map or a series of rough headings. In general, the more detailed the plan the easier it will be to write up the essay, but even a broad plan is better than no plan at all.

3. Use your own headings.

In longer essays, it’s usually best to use headings to break the main body down into shorter sections. This helps your reader understand the structure of your work. In shorter essays, you probably shouldn’t use headings, as this results in very short sections which can make the essay fragmented and difficult to read. However, you can still use your own headings – perhaps even for every paragraph- to help you structure the essay. Just remember to take these headings out before you submit.

Sometimes, you can turn these headings into your topic sentences- for more advice on topic sentences, and on good paragraph structure in general, see the Powerful Paragraphs section of Essay Bites.

Proofreading is an essential part of the writing process. It’s usually very obvious to markers when an essay hasn’t been carefully proofread. Taking the time to polish your final draft is likely to result in a better grade; conversely, not proofreading your essay is likely to negatively impact your mark.

The problem is, even though proofreading can have a big impact on your grades, many students forget to proofread. Why?

Sometimes, students don’t proofread their essays simply because they run out of time. It’s important that this doesn’t happen to you. Always allow yourself time to go over your essay, rather than submitting a piece of work that is potentially full of careless and easily fixed errors.

On other occasions, you may have plenty of time to proofread your essay but you’re not sure how to go about the task, or even what to look for.

Fortunately, there are many easy techniques which allow you to effectively proofread your work, whether or not you think of yourself as a good writer. Have a look at the recording of our Lightning Session on the subject and then scroll down to see some tips and techniques.

[To skip the intros, jump straight to 2:05]

Here are our top tips to begin developing your proofreading skills.

1. Learn from your mistakes.

A useful starting point is to re-read your feedback from previous assignments. It’s never fun to read about things we’ve done wrong, but try to see feedback as advice on how to get a better mark next time. Often, as well as pointing out errors, markers will suggest ways of correcting these issues. So, start the proofreading process by looking out for the things your marker picked up on last time and try to avoid making the same mistakes again.

2. Proofread from the page.

It makes sense to begin proofreading on screen, using spell check or other software to look for obvious errors. However, after you’ve done your initial online check, you should consider printing your work out and proofreading from a hard copy. We read very differently on screen and from on the page, and errors which you don’t notice online may become obvious when you see them on paper. If you don’t have a printer, or don’t like to waste paper, it can also help to change the font on your word processor. Just like looking at paper rather than at a screen, changing the text font or size helps you see your work in a new light.

3. Read your work out loud.

You can gain a very different perspective on your writing by reading it out loud. When doing so, you’ll notice a lot of errors that you don’t spot when you’re reading silently to yourself. For example, you may stumble over spelling errors, lose your breath when sentences are too long, or realise that something you thought made sense when you were reading in your head sounds unclear when verbalised.

Finally, remember that the Academic Skills Centre can help you to develop your confidence in writing and proofreading your own work. Check out some of our other online resources and if you’d like some more help with your proofreading skills, consider making an appointment with one of our tutors.