Reflective Essay: Academic Skills and Gibbs Cycle Analysis

This reflective essay details a student's experience in a coursework, focusing on the development of academic skills. The student utilizes Gibbs' reflective cycle to analyze their performance in reading comprehension, writing, and presentation skills. The essay describes the activities, feelings, evaluations, and analyses of the student's learning process, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses. The student reflects on initial apprehension in group reading activities, challenges in presentations, and the process of writing academic essays. The essay concludes with an action plan to improve presentation skills through classes and enhance writing skills by seeking feedback. The student aims to use the Gibbs model to understand their experience and plan for future development.

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
A reflective essay.........................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

MAIN BODY
A reflective essay
As a student, it is essential that I develop appropriate reading writing and communicating
skills that will assist me in academic knowledge. Under this entire course, there were various
learnings that I made and knowledge that I gained but there are many challenges as well . I will
be using Gibbs reflective cycle to document what I learnt and the challenges that I faced during
the entire process. This can be categorized into six stages:
Description: This is the first step where I will describe what activities and learning was
involved in the course work (Dhaliwal, Singh and Singh, 2017). I learnt about reading and
comprehensions, I learnt to write in different academic styles which are very necessary while
studying at the University level and I also learnt the presentation skills. All these were the part of
coursework, and we were expected to produce an essay at the end of the coursework which
should be written properly in the academic writing style that is expected of the student studying
Illustration 1: Gibbs reflective cycle
Source: Gibbs Reflective Cycle by Graham Gibbs, 2019

at University Level. At each stage and after every assignment, there was a system of giving
feedbacks where we would receive feedback comments from our teachers or mentors who would
guide us regarding what are the different areas in which I lacked and it was also stated that what
are those areas at which I excelled. This was done so that we could identify and analyse our
performance levels during the entire course work. All these activities were covered in the
coursework that I undertook at the university.
Feelings: I felt a myriad of feelings and emotions whole undergoing through the entire
coursework and the activities that we were involved in. In the reading activity, we were tasked to
do this in a group activity and initially I found myself very apprehensive regarding my
pronunciations and fluency. This made me frequently trip and miss words because of the
nervousness but I slowly gained confidence. I also realized that my vocal abilities are well-
developed and many people found my voice soothing and pleasing to hear. I also learnt how to
present my point and give rationale behind that belief without offending other person. In the
presentation task, I failed miserably because we were all nervous that we might mix up the facts
for the history project or even forget what we had to speak. It was not a very great performance
and I think that our audience was left confused many times regarding what we wanted to convey.
The last task was the essay, and I was very nervous because I had no prior experience of writing
academic essays at university level and I also failed to address or achieve the objective of the
essay initially. But after two trials, I was able to understand how I was to write in a relevant and
concise manner keeping essay to the point.
Evaluation: The evaluation point helps me in analysing that what went well during the
entire coursework and which were those aspects where I lacked or where I did not perform well
(Waltz, 2019). I can clearly state that during the reading comprehension part, I was not able to
perform very well in starting and during the initial days I even got negative feedback comments
where I was told by my teachers that I was getting too nervous and was consistently fidgeting
with the words. But later I improved, and they told me that the improvement was significant and
a major contributing factor in my personality building. However, my presentation was not so
good because feedback comments from teachers stated that I lacked enough confidence but then
again, here also I received something positive that my entire class was feeling nervous and
despite that I was able to at least make a comprehensive speech where I spoke what was relevant
and people understood my point. The last task of academic essay went extremely well where I

received positive feedback comments from the teacher, and he stated that I wrote a fine essay for
someone who was attempting to write the essay for a first time at the university level.
Analysis: There was a lot that I learnt during the entire coursework as I was able to
recognize what are my strengths and weaknesses related to the academic and study skills that I
possess (Markkanen and et. al., 2020). I was able to identify that public speaking is not really my
forte and I need to work extremely hard upon that, but I was also able to identify that my voice is
a soothing sensation and I have the capability to present my point well. Further, the best analysis
was that I can write really well and the way in which I was praised by my teacher really boosted
up my confidence level.
Conclusion: On the basis of the entire coursework and while looking back at it, I can
effectively conclude that I was able to recognize and critically analyse that what are those areas
on which I need to work and how hard I need to work on them. Although, I lack in all the aspects
and the learning process still has to continue, I need to work really hard on the presentation skills
that I have.
Action Plan: Based on the conclusion I drew above, I plan to join a class where they will
teach me presentation skills and also help me in improving the gestures that I use while giving
presentation, eye contact that I should maintain while speaking etc. I have also decided that I will
further enhance my writing skills by regularly writing up mock essays or anything and I will
regularly get feedback on those from my teacher so that I can effectively develop myself in that
field.
Therefore, using the Gibbs model, I was able to analyse myself and the entire experience
that I had during the coursework. I was also able to develop a proper action plan for the future.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Dhaliwal, U., Singh, S. and Singh, N., 2017. Reflective student narratives: honing
professionalism and empathy. Indian J Med Ethics. 3(1). pp.9-15.
Markkanen, P., Välimäki, M., Anttila, M. and Kuuskorpi, M., 2020. A reflective cycle:
Understanding challenging situations in a school setting. Educational Research, pp.1-17.
Waltz, C., 2019. Impact of Reflective Practice within a Residency Program on New Graduate
Nurse Satisfaction, Stress, Support, and Retention Rates.
Online
Gibbs Reflective Cycle by Graham Gibbs. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.toolshero.com/management/gibbs-reflective-cycle-graham-gibbs/>
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