Higher Writing Portfolio

1. Higher Writing Portfolio Reflective Writing

2. The information in this power point presentation is based on the information from the textbook: Intermediate 2 and Higher English Essay Writing Skills for the Writing Portfolio.

3. Personal Reflective Essay What better subject to write about than our own life? A reflective essay allows you the freedom to explore your own memories as well as your thoughts and attitudes on a particular topic.

4. Things to Avoid… • Reflect! It’s not enough to consider your thoughts and feelings on a basic level. Reflect on the situation more thoroughly – consider what you have learned from the experience. • Consider the view points of others. • You should be demonstrating a reasonable amount of emotional maturity which should go well beyond what you conveyed at Standard Grade. • Careless errors that can be avoided! Proof read and spell check all of your work thoroughly.

5. Choosing Your Subject Matter • It is wise to select a topic which you have strong feelings on or vivid memories of. • You may wish to reflect on your views on a particular topic. • Think about your experiences – what things have helped to shape your opinions on the world?

6. Structure • It is essential that you plan your essay – your ideas must be presented in a sensible order. • Try to ensure that your essay is interesting to your reader – grab their attention. • Reflect on your experience – what have you learned?

7. Expression • Remember when you were told that every single word in a poem is important? • As a writer, you are responsible for carefully selecting your words. Think about what ideas you want to convey. • What do you want your reader to imagine? • Avoid hackneyed expressions and clichés.

8. Technical Accuracy • Your folio consists of two polished essays – you are responsible for proof reading and amending your work once it has been checked. • There is no excuse for careless grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. • Take care over your work – make sure you are 100% happy with it and that there are no mistakes.

9. What will my essay be about…? • Here are four different types of personal reflective essay you might choose:

10. Event-Driven Experience • Can you think of any significant thing - exciting or happy or sad that’s happened to you? • A family or social event? Wedding, funeral, party, competition. • A time when you lost something or someone, were wrongly accused, a serious illness suffered by you or someone close to you, divorce, moving house/country/school

11. Emotion Driven Experience • Think of a time when you experienced a particular emotion – you should choose a really significant memory to you. • Fear, anger, guilt, loss, envy, responsibility, confidence, excitement, prejudice, disappointment, happiness… • Tip: Have a look through photographs you have – this may trigger an interesting memory.

12. Activity-Driven Experience • Think about your hobbies and past times. • Do you participate in any groups or sporting activities, clubs, societies that you could write about. • Maybe you have been involved in competitions or community events. Do you have responsibility within the school?

13. Relationship-Driven Experience • Writing about your relationships with other people: • Best friends, fall outs, meeting new people, being let down by friends. • Changes to family relationships due to births, deaths, divorce, remarriage etc. • Consider any changes that you have had to adapt to within your life.

14. Important Tip: Only write about the memories and experiences that are truly important to you and that are vivid. This will help you to write a more convincing and passionate essay which your reader will be truly interested in.

15. 4 Steps = Effective Planning • Note your memories. • List the detail. • Explore your feelings. • Reflect.

16. 1. Note your memories • Writing down what you remember will help you to figure out what details and events need to be included in your essay. • Arrange your thoughts in chronological order so that you can make sense of the situation. • This should help you to figure out how many paragraphs your essay will have.

17. 2. List the Detail • Try to bring your story to life: • Explore your senses – what do you remember seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, tasting…? • How did you feel and how did you act towards others? How did others behave towards you? • Try to bring your story to life.

18. 3. Explore Your Feelings

19. Getting Started • Introduction – hook the reader, you want them to enjoy and be interested in reading your essay from the very start. • Body Paragraphs – you should have a strong topic sentence at the start of each paragraph to maintain your focus. Add a reflective comment to each paragraph. • Conclusion – consider your own attitudes and feelings towards the experience. Try to show off what the experience has taught you about yourself.

20. Ways to Write the Introduction: • Decide how you are going to tell your story: • The chronological start: this enables you to build up to the events as they happen. • The flash forward start: you may wish to start in the middle of the experience in order to grab the reader’s attention before going back in time to fill in the necessary details.

21. Final Checklist: • Does the story make sense and is it told clearly? • Are there any important details which are missing? • Do I have a nice balance between narrative and reflection? • Have I included imagery and interesting word choice? • How will my reader perceive me? Do I come across in a positive fashion? • Does this essay help the reader and myself to get to know Me better? • If the answer is no – take the opportunity to fix it!

22. Editing Your Story • It is important to realise that you may need to edit your essay many times before you are truly satisfied with it. • Edit to catch out any careless errors such as punctuation, expression, spelling, repetition… there is no excuse for errors that could have been avoided. • Take pride in your work - polish your story, there’s a good chance this will improve your grade!

23. Presentation Stick to the following guidelines: • Use font size 12 • Use a standard font: Arial, Times New Roman – nothing elaborate • Justify your essay alignment • Margins should be 2cm • Line spacing should be either 1.5 or 2 – so that the marker can easily add comments • Print in black ink

24. One Last Thing… Is this essay truly personal and truly reflective? Do you feel like you have learned something valuable about yourself or revealed something important about yourself? Are you proud of what you have achieved and do you enjoy reading your essay? Yes? Then hopefully others will too.