Reflective essay - it is one of the most complex essays because it tests the following abilities:

thinking critically, describing, good organization of the ideas connected with examples from the
personal experience.
There are two types of reflective essay:
1. Descriptive- reflective – a mixture of describing something and reflecting upon it
bringing your own feelings and experiences into his/her writing (for example Gardening,
The sea etc.)
2. Abstract – the accent is placed on thinking and usually have a title made of a single word
(for example Beauty, Truth etc). In this kind of essay the description is not so important,
feelings, personal experience, critical thinking are more important.
Tips for writing a good reflective essay:
1. Decide upon which kind of reflective essay is it: Descriptive- reflective or abstract
2. Give it a title
3. Brainstorm the word/words (for example you have to write a reflective essay on
Frontiers. The Descriptive- reflective essay can include:
- frontiers between countries
- geographic descriptions (land, water, air)
- frontiers seen as a separating space between two or more communities
- they can be movable, or fixed
- frontiers in history
- frontiers seen as a defense etc
In the abstract reflective essay, the topic must be written in a metaforical manner:
- frontiers seen as a person’s intimacy
- psychical limit
- boundaries
- means of isolation
- prevention from communication (language, behaviour, culture etc.)
- why do we have inter-human frontiers?
- do we build such frontiers voluntarily or not? etc.
4. The essay must include:
A. Introduction - As is the case with all essays, your reflective essay must begin within
an introduction that contains both a hook and a thesis statement. The point of having a ‘hook’ is
to grab the attention of your audience or reader from the very beginning. You must portray the
exciting aspects of your story in the initial paragraph so that you stand the best chances of
holding your reader’s interest. The thesis statement is a brief summary of the focus of the essay.
Remember to give a quick overview of your experience – don’t give too much information away
or you risk your reader becoming disinterested.
B. Body - Next up is planning the body of your essay. This can be the hardest part of the
entire paper; it’s easy to waffle and repeat yourself both in the plan, and in the actual writing.
Have you ever tried recounting a story to a friend only for them to tell you to ‘cut the long story
short’? They key here is to put plenty of time and effort into planning the body, and you can
draw on the following tips to help you do this well:

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Try adopting a chronological approach. This means working through everything you want to
touch upon as it happened in time. This kind of approach will ensure that your work is systematic
and coherent. Keep in mind that a reflective essay doesn’t necessarily have to be linear, but
working chronologically will prevent you from providing a haphazard recollection of your
experience. Lay out the important elements of your experience in a timeline – this will then help
you clearly see how to piece your narrative together.
Ensure the body of your reflective essay is well focused, and contains appropriate critique and
reflection. The body should not only summarise your experience, it should explore the impact
that the experience has had on your life, as well as the lessons that you have learned as a result.
The emphasis should generally be on reflection as opposed to summation. A reflective posture
will not only provide readers with insight on your experience, it’ll highlight your personality and
your ability to deal with or adapt to particular situations.
C. Conclusion - In the conclusion of your reflective essay, you should focus on bringing
your piece together by providing a summary of both the points made throughout, and what you
have learned as a result. Try to include a few points on why and how your attitudes and
behaviours have been changed. Consider also how your character and skills have been affected,
for example: what conclusions can be drawn about your problem-solving skills? What can be
concluded about your approach to specific situations? What might you do differently in similar
situations in the future? What steps have you taken to consolidate everything that you have
learned from your experience? Keep in mind that your tutor will be looking out for evidence of
reflection at a very high standard.

Important:
The Reflective essay is formal – DO NOT use contractions
Use formal language.

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 Title: Tourists
Type: Descriptive-reflexive
Main idea: Tourism today is a minutely organized affair. The average tourist actually sees very
little of the country s/ he visits.
Brainstorming:
- leaflets, brochures, guide books
- tourists plan their holiday a long tome before it actually takes place
- winter time
- local colour
- souvenirs
- sun glasses
- beach
- cruise liners
- ruins, spas
- post –cards
- typical scenes and traditionalism
- rush
- hotels
- travel agencies
- programmes
- tourists see little and have no time to understand and analyse
- holiday is over; back to work; another year full of work ahead of us
Introduction:
- means of transportation for the tourists
- guide books, maps and travel agencies make everything easier
Body:
- the tourist is planning his holiday ling time before it takes place, even in the long winter
months (making decisions, calculating and balancing all the offers)
- nice thoughts about the holiday to come
- holiday time approaching and the host countriea getting ready to receive tourists (spas, ruins,
castles, typical scenes, traditional food and entertainment, souvenirs etc.)
- sight-seeing; tourists see little and have no tyme to analyse and value things; they only have
time to take pictures and send post-cards to their family and friends; snapshots
Conclusion:
- the holiday is over, the tourist returns home
- s /he is refreshed and ready to start work again

Tourists
By car, by train, by ship and by plane, thousands and thousands of tourists depart from home
like migrating birds every year. They provide the best possible evidence to prove that the world
is not big enough. Armed with all sorts of guide books, leflets and maps which tell them where to
go and how to get there, what to see and eat, where to stay and what to do, tourists wander the
globe in search of the unseen, the unique, the unbelievable. There are travel agencies
everywhere to cater for the tourist’s needs and make all the necessary preparations for him.
They make out ambitious programmes and promise to show him as many as seven countries in a
fortnight or, if he is in a hurry, they will cover the same ground in fewer days.

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In the safety of his own home, away from the cold winter time outdoors, the tourist begins
planning the summer holiday he longs for. Spread out before him on the floor is a splendid array
of brightly/coloured leaflets, brochures and guide books all of them equally tempting. Here is a
magic island, there a magnific cruise liner, the leaflet on the table reveals a superb blonde
blinking an eye while sipping an exotic cocktail and enjoying the sun…Now is the time for big
decisions to be made, for a fortnight’s holiday is not to be squandered lightly. Would he like to
go on a cruise and swim in the ocean? Would he like to ski and sip a hot chocolate in Aspen?
Would he like to visit a remote corner of the world and hunt? And above all, would he like to do
something he will always remember? It is all there for the asking. Shivering before the fire in the
fireplace and armed with his best paper and pencil, the tourist makes all sorts of calculations
and balances everything in his mind. It takes him an eternity to decide in which particular
promising land he should invest his heard-earned money.
Once the decision made, the tourist is free from worry. He now has something definite to dream
at and discuss about over a cup of coffee, at the gym, when bowling or playing cards. In the
tourist’s mind there is now a little heaven of peace and quiet taking shape minute by minute. This
idea comforts him during the bitter winter months.
Winter passes and the time draws near. The simple tourist is often innocent of the fact that most
countries in the world have become tourist-conscious. For months now, each country has been
advertising its beaches and cities, its spas and ruins, its beauty, modernity and tradition in a
frantic effort to be chosen. They do their best to meet the tourist’s needs and be up to his
expectations. So, it ges without say that they provide”typical” scenes: costumes, food, music,
ways of entertainment etc. Representatives of the tourist organization give the visitor a hearty
welcome the moment he sets foot on their “teritory” and vendors of souvenirs find themselves in
a permanent competition.
It is no wonder that the tourist is an extremely busy man. He barely arrives at the hotel that he is
immediately taken on a conducted tour of the city by day or by night (according to the moment
he arrives). In the morning, he goes through another ardous course of sight-seeing. He has
barely had the possibility to recover, or find out exactly where the hotel is located, before he is
off again to another part of the country. It is not a tour what he gets. It is a snap-shot view. No
time to analyse or even understand what everything is about. He only has at most half an hour to
take some pictures which he can sort when getting home and proudly show them to his friends.
The only inconvenient would be that he can no longer remember where each of them was taken
and what they represent. In his perpetual race against time, the tourist is always sending post-
cards to his relatives depicting wonderful views of places stored randomly in his mind, like more
and more pieces of puzzle.
No other fortnight in the whole year passed so quickly. Travel-worn, the tourist eventually
arrives home proudly displaying his collection of passport-stamps. Truly rested, he is back at the
office the next day with a year’s work ahead of him. But winter comes again and he will begin
another chase of best paradises to see during his next summer holiday.

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 Title: Tradition
Type: abstract
Main idea: Tradition is like a living body, in a permanent change.
Brainstorming:
- perceived as a rigid thing
- association with the old
- struggle to accept the new
- re-examination and re-evaluation of the past
- tradition is misunderstood
- war
- what does tradition mean?
- Darwin; social revolution
- slow assimilation
- tradition is like a city
- we get it from our ancestors and pass it on to our successors

Introduction:
- the word ‘tradition’ is misunderstood; it is not a fixed rigid thing
Body:
- there is a struggle to accept the new
- we cannot decide if everything which is dazzling new will ever become tradition: fashion,
arts, politics etc.
- exception: atomic energy, for instance; there have been dramatic changes (slow process, but
sure)
- the manner in which new ideas are accepted: half way by one generation and completely by
the next one
- Darwin’s example

Conclusion:
- tradition is like a city, always changing.
- it is something we inherit from our ancestors and pass to our successors, but we do not keep it
unaltered.

Tradition
Due to the fact that the word itself is widely used, it is frequently misunderstood. It is regarded
as a fixed entity, rigidly hostile to change, something to be defended against those who do not
treasure it. Nothing could be more mistaken. Tradition is not only made up of our important
beliefs, but also the great host of trivial daily habits and customs we acquire in the course of
growing up. Nor is it inflexible. New ideas are continually being adapted to fit in with the old.
This process is slow but sure. And when old ideas become obsolete, they fall into oblivion.
There is a permanent struggle concerning the acceptance of the new. People do not wish to give
up notions they hold dear. Thus, tradition protects itself, for by providing a testing-ground of the
new, it allows only what is of some value to assert itself.
In this way, tradition acts like a protector against the easy acceptance of new ideas which seem
to be attractive on the surface. Not everything which is dazzling new is worth to be labelled as
long-lasting item, but it is impossible for us to decide whether it is valuable or not. What seems

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to be extremely new and trendy in arts, politics or science may no longer be valid in a few
years’time. The desire for novelty which is so important in fashion, architecture or design
sometimes affects our most important beliefs and institutions. We are often urged by the media to
“re-examine” and “re-assess” long-established views which have taken centuries to form and
replace them by opinions which have been conceived in a few hours or days. One may wonder
how many such “re-assessments” will be remembered in few years’ time.
It is equally true that sometimes a discovery may completely alter our outlook. Ideas which have
been kept intact for centuries can occasionally be swept away over night. For instance, present
advances in nuclear physics have totally changed our “traditional”conception of warfare. The
very word “war” has now taken on a new meaning which was unknown as recently as 1944.
Nevertheless, dramatic changes of this sort are unusual. The big social revolution we have
witnessed in the twentieth century still has a long way to go before reaching anything like
perfection.
Ideas which are half-accepted by one generation are often completely accepted by the one that
follows. Novelty is harshly attacked by those who cannot conceive of a new order and are
judged by standards of the past. This is due to the fact that people’s sensibilities are confined to
what they have always known and believed. What was totally new to one generation is easily
assimilated by the following one because sensibility has widened enough to allow a notion that
was once considered radical to establish itself. A good example is Darwin’s Origin of
Species: the controversy that it initially provocked has lingered down to this day. If at the
beginning Darwin’s arguments were hotly disputed, now they are part of our cultural heritage.
This means that they no longer shock our sensibilities. In the same way, modern music does not
strike us as discordant because it does not conform to former conceptions of harmony. What
were once new ideas have withstood the test tradition has imposed on them.
Our view of the past is always changing. Tradition is like a great city which is growing and
developing continuously. Old buildings disappear and new ones take their places. Regardless of
its form, shape or size, each new building alters our vision on the already existing ones. The city
we have in front of our eyes is not the one our ancestors saw and used to know. Nor is it the one
we shall pass to our successors.