Y05W28WR A Person Who Changed Me

Part 1

How to Write

Reflective – Reflective piece

A reflective piece invites a reader into a personal experience and moves beyond what happened to explore what it meant. It is written for an audience interested in honest, considered thinking rather than just events. The tone is personal and thoughtful — candid enough to feel real, but shaped enough to be worth reading.

  • Ideas & content: Choose a specific experience and explore it in depth. The best reflections go beyond describing what happened to examining what it revealed, taught or changed.
  • Structure & cohesion: Begin with the experience itself, then move into reflection. Use a mix of narrative and reflective commentary — shift naturally between recounting and thinking.
  • Voice & audience: Write in first person with genuine honesty. Avoid performing emotions or arriving at tidy conclusions too quickly — let the complexity of the experience show.
  • Language choices: Use sensory detail to ground the reader in the experience. Use reflective verbs such as I realised, I understood and looking back to signal the move from event to reflection.
  • Conventions: Keep tense consistent — usually past for events, present for reflective insight. Use commas and dashes to pace the writing and create space for thought.

Common pitfalls: Spending too much of the piece on what happened and not enough on what it meant — reflection is the core purpose, not just context. Arriving at a conclusion that feels forced or too tidy rather than genuinely explored.

Part 2

Your Task Plan for Today

The brief

Question: Write a reflective piece about a person who has had a genuine impact on you. Describe who they are, what they said or did, and reflect on why it mattered and what effect it has had on you.

Stimulus: Sometimes a person — a teacher, a relative, a coach, an older student, even a stranger — says or does something that stays with us long after the moment has passed. It might have been a piece of advice, a simple act of kindness, a challenge they set us or something they believed about us that we had not seen in ourselves.

Task Analysis: Think of a person who changed how you see yourself or the world. What did they do? What did they say? Think about why it mattered so much and what changed because of them.

Quick Plan

Before you write, plan:

  • Who the person is — a teacher? A relative? A friend?
  • What they said or did — be specific
  • Why it mattered — what did it mean to you?
  • How it changed you — how are you different because of them?

Opening strategy

Start with a specific moment. Not: ‘My teacher was kind.’ Better: ‘My teacher sat with me after class and said, “I think you are braver than you know.”’ Show the reader the moment.

Show, don’t tell details

Use details to make the moment real. What did the person look like? How did their voice sound? What did you see in their face? Small details make the moment stick.

Resolution & change

Reflect on what changed. Maybe you believed in yourself more. Maybe you understood kindness differently. Say what is different about you because of this person.