How do you reflect on and justify the choices you made in your own composition?
Reflect on and explain the deliberate choices made in composing a text and their intended effect on an audience
A focused answer to the WACE Year 12 English Unit 3 dot point on reflection. How to write a reflective statement that justifies choices in the language of analysis, how to connect intention to technique to effect, and how to avoid mere description of what you did.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
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What this dot point is asking
Reflective writing is the bridge between composing and analysing. Many school assessment tasks pair an original composition with a reflective statement that explains it, and the reflection is marked on whether you can talk about your own writing the way you talk about a studied text. This dot point asks you to turn the analytical vocabulary of the course back onto your own choices, which proves you composed with control rather than by accident.
Reflection justifies, it does not narrate
The single most important distinction is between narrating and justifying. Narrating tells the reader what you did: I started with a description of the beach, then I introduced the character. Justifying explains why the choice serves your purpose: I opened with the emptied beach so the absence would establish the loss before the character names it, sparing the piece an explicit statement of grief. A marker can reward a justified choice because it demonstrates intention. A narrated choice demonstrates only memory.
Anchor every reflection to context, purpose and audience
A reflection has a spine when it keeps returning to the brief you set yourself. State the context, purpose and audience your composition was built for, then justify each major choice as serving them. A choice that cannot be tied back to purpose or audience is hard to defend, which is itself a useful diagnostic when you are deciding what to keep in the reflection.
Use the analytical chain on your own work
Reflect on your composition exactly as you would analyse a published text: name the feature, explain the choice, argue the intended effect. The only difference is that you can speak to intention directly. This lets you write sentences no analysis of another writer could, because you genuinely know why the choice was made.
The paragraph never narrates the plot of the composition. Every sentence ties a specific choice to the purpose and audience and argues the intended effect, which is reflection done at the level the dot point rewards.
Be honest about constraint and revision
Strong reflections can also discuss what was cut and why. Explaining that you removed an explanatory sentence because it told rather than showed demonstrates editorial control, which markers value as much as the original choices. Reflection is partly a record of judgement, and judgement includes restraint.
How this maps to the exam
While the external Composing section asks for the composition itself rather than a separate reflection, the reflective skill is heavily assessed in school-based composing tasks, which make up half your course mark. The discipline of justifying choices also makes you a more deliberate composer under exam conditions, because you write while already anticipating the defence of each choice.