Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society
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CHIN20021 / CHIN30006 Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society
Reflective essay and questions
All students who are taking Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society are required to write a
reflective essay. The essay is worth 40% of the subject assessment. Students should also note the
followings:
Your essay should be around 1,500 to 2,000 words in English or 2,500 to 3,000 in Chinese.
The essay can be written in either Chinese or English.
The essay must be based on at least four academic publications, or four analytical essays
if no academic publications are available.
You only need to do one of the given questions listed below.
The essay should be submitted in by the end of Week 8 and marked essays will be
available online at the beginning of Week 11.
Please submit your essay online via the link for Reflective Essay, which is listed on the
Assignments page. If you are not familiar with the LMS Canvas, please Google how to
upload a file as an assignment on the LMS Canvas.
Please remember to write down your name on your essay!
Please note that the LMS Canvas has Turnitin integrated inside it and that make sure you write
the essay in your own words.
Reflective essay
Reflective writing is aimed at helping you examine both the knowledge that you are learning and
the analytical skills that you are developing in the subject. The latter is far more important than
the former. There are several ways to write a reflective essay. In general, a reflective essay is
different from a research essay, and it is a minor or small-scale critical literature review.
Therefore, you must be critical and analytical.
You are expected to read and show your understanding about different explanations of the topic
or the issue that you have decided to reflect upon and to analyse the differences. You are not
expected to go too far beyond four or five academic publications, BUT you are expected to
identify the pitfalls of the research publications that you have found and to indicate how to
address the problems.
To identify shortcomings and gaps in the current understanding of the issue, you also need to
provide or mention additional three to four pieces of documented evidence, which are not
necessarily academic, to support your argument or your critical comments on those research
publications. For example, some media reports or other surveys have revealed some evidence
that contradict certain arguments or interpretations presented in academic publications.
To a degree, writing a reflective essay is the practice of writing a minor or short critical literature
review, which will prepare you for your next research essay. Reflective writing involves several
steps. If you are not familiar with it, the following are key suggestions:
Page 1 of 3
Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society (CHIN20021 / CHIN30006)
First, you need to choose one of the given topics, listed on Page 3 of this document, based on
your own reading interests and the availability of research publications. Please note that you do
not need to use your own topic, which will not only give readers the impression that you are
copying from other published sources, but also affect your critical and analytical reflection and
writing. Once the question for your essay is chosen, you need to briefly explain the question that
you choose to reflect and demonstrate your understanding of that specific issue and how
knowledge on the issue or topic has developed so far by academic researchers, or by other
educated professionals in the case that no academic publications have been produced.
Second, you need to briefly explain your strategy for responding to the question. That is, you also
need to briefly describe what you will be trying to achieve in your response, what needs to be
done to accomplish it, and what should be done first and so on.