Reflective Report: Essay Writing Process, Skills, and Education

This reflective report analyzes the process of writing an academic essay, focusing on the structure, study skills, and feedback received. The report examines the student's experience, incorporating insights from study skills sessions and module tutor guidance. It reflects on the comparison between the education systems of the UK and the student's home country, India, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each. The report also includes an action plan for future essay writing, emphasizing the importance of early planning and critical analysis. The student discusses the impact of peer feedback and the challenges encountered in formulating arguments, ultimately aiming to improve their academic writing skills and understanding of educational differences. References from various academic sources support the analysis.

Reflective Report
Assignment Task Part A2

Introduction
The reflective presentation will ponder over the structure that was
followed while constructing the Academic Essay in the Task A1
The previous experience of writing an academic essay that I had,
regarding the composition of an academic essay have been evaluated in
this presentation.
How I have used my past experience in writing this essay and what I
learned up on implementing my past knowledge have been reflected
here also.
I should also discuss how the study skill sessions helped me to construct
this essay, in the following presentation.
The stages of writing are also clearly depicted and how they helped me
to frame my academic essay have also been described in detail.
The perception about the basic differences that exists between the
education culture of my home country, India and UK have been
discussed in detail.
I will also incorporate an action plan that will help in my strategic
progress when I consider writing an academic essay the next time, in
this presentation.

My experience of writing an academic
essay
Influenced from the ideas of Whitelock et al. (2017), regarding
structuring of an essay, in the initial phase, I began to develop a
framework with the basic ideas I had regarding the educational
culture of the two nations.
Thereafter I started to align the framework of my own ideas with
the outline of the academic essay regarding its structure that I
have been provided with.
This is indeed a special instance for me to work on this essay as I
will gain insight regarding the loopholes that exists in the
education culture of my own country and parallelly I will also
understand the beneficial aspects of studying in UK.
I have already indicated that Indians have a general affinity to
accomplish higher education from the universities of UK.
I have always preserved the same mentality
However, I always had the quest to discover the demerits of my
own educational system and identify how these limitations can be
eradicated.

Impact of the Study Skills sessions on my
academic understanding
The study skills session that I attended, in my
university actually helped me to gain a proper insight
regarding how I should construct a proper academic
paper (essay)
I am able to accommodate my research data in the
academic essay structure and make relevant
arguments on the basis of the explored data after
attending the Study skills classes.
The strategic factors that I should consider while
writing a comparative study in the education cultures
of the two countries was explained to us in detail in
the study skills sessions.
The reference links also provided fundamental
support in the construction of the essay (Devlin 2016).

Role of feedback and guidance of Module Tutor
The peer feedback I received while
composing the essay helped me to make the
essay more strategic and relevant by
inserting additional argumentative points.
The strategic questions that have been
developed by the module tutor helped me to
understand the direction in which I should
conduct my research (Kobayashi, Zappa-
Hollman and Duff 2017).
The peer reviews in this essay mostly helped
me to write the conclusion part of the essay
when I was having difficulties in skimming
the principal findings and reflecting them in

Comparison of the educational culture
of the two countries
I feel that I have conducted a well framed research
regarding comparison between the education setting
of the two countries.
Since I am a foreign student in UK, I am unaware of
the education as well as structure of schooling
starting from the primary to the university level of
education. That is why this research will help me to
get a clear conception about the education culture of
the school level in UK.
I should specifically mention that I could understand
that the UK education culture gets the necessary
boost from the independent learning model that is
advocated at the schools of UK (Chokwe 2015).

Creating the reflective action plan
I feel that should have started writing the assignment much earlier.
This would have allowed me more time to make the final draft of the
assignment.
Hence, I would do the same from the next time onwards
My limitations in creating an argument in the course of the essay
have been revealed while developing this essay, from the ideas I
founded from Neumann, Neumann and Lewis (2017). That is where
my module leader helped me through provisions of example of some
of the best critical arguments.
In fact I suppose that while writing my next essay I should observe
how authors have accumulated their arguments in creating
academic essays that shows comparison between two variables.
In fact peer review has also been of great help to me . My peers
helped me to reiterate on the main areas of difference between the
education setting of the two countries that I was not considering in
the beginning.
I got help from the peers in developing the statement of research of
this essay also.

Conclusion
In writing the academic essay, I got much help from
the study skills’ classes which helped me to frame the
essay on an argumentative basis.
These classes also helped me to develop the basic
arguments in the essay also.
The research that I conducted during this essay also
helped me to understand the fundamental differences
of the educational culture of the two countries.
I have also been able to explore the mentality of the
average Indian and at large the Asian students who
prefer to come and study in UK.
I was also able to understand that from the next time
onwards when I undertake any academic project, I
should focus more on the research work and start
writing the project much earlier.

Reference List and Bibliography
Chokwe, J., 2015. Students’ and tutors’ perceptions of feedback on academic
essays in an open and distance learning context. Open Praxis, 7(1), pp.39-56.
Devlin, K., 2016. Is the academic essay becoming a fossil through lack of
authorial voice? The case for more stylish and exploratory writing. Spark:
UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 1(1), pp.34-40.
Kobayashi, M., Zappa-Hollman, S. and Duff, P.A., 2017. Academic discourse
socialization. Language socialization, pp.1-17.
Neumann, Y., Neumann, E. and Lewis, S., 2017. Determinants of Self-
Reflective Learning and Its Consequences in Online Master Degree
Programs. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 20(1), p.n1.
Taylor, E.W., 2017. Transformative learning theory. In Transformative
Learning Meets Bildung (pp. 17-29). Brill Sense.
Wallin, P., Reams, J., Veine, S. and Anderson, M.K., 2018. Creating Responsive
Learning Environments to Develop Students’ Reflective Capacity.
Wallin, P., Reams, J., Veine, S. and Anderson, M.K., 2018. Creating Responsive
Learning Environments to Develop Students’ Reflective Capacity.
Whitelock, D., Twiner, A., Richardson, J.T., Field, D. and Pulman, S., 2015,
March. OpenEssayist: a supply and demand learning analytics tool for
drafting academic essays. In Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge (pp. 208-212). ACM.