Gender Performance in Advertising Media Reflect on your experiences and ideas as it relates to the topic, of course.
The questions provided should be a part of this process. You should reflect upon the experiences and ideas before you start to write, although additional insights are likely to emerge throughout the writing process. Discuss with a friend or colleague and develop your insights. Keep notes on your thinking. At first, you may find it helpful to create a chart or table to keep track of your ideas. For example:
- In the first column, you can list the main points or key experiences. These points can include anything that the author or speaker treated with importance as well as any specific details you found to be important.
- In the second column, you can list your personal response to the points you brought up in the first column. Note how your subjective values, experiences, and beliefs influence your response.
- In the third and final column, you can describe how much of your personal response you feel comfortable sharing in your reflection paper. Considering a large proportion of your reflective account is based on your own experience, it is normally appropriate to use the first person (‘I’). Identify which parts of your experience you are being asked to reflect on and use this as a guide to when to use the first person. When writing about your reflections use the past tense as you are referring to a particular moment (i.e. I felt…). When incorporating theory from elsewhere use the present tense as the ideas are still current (i.e. Smith proposes that…). Try to avoid emotive or subjective terms. Even though you are drawing on your experiences (and they may well have been emotional), you are trying to communicate these to your reader in an academic (sociological) style. This means using descriptions that everyone would understand in the same way, but also drawing on sociological material from textbook readings, seminar articles, films, lecture material etc. (which must be properly cited in ASA).
