Writing a Personal Experience Essay
Pre-writing
Choose one experience from your life that is interesting enough to be told.
Introduction
Think of an introduction that will make the reader eager to know more about the experience.
Body
Use simple past or past continuous tense. If something happened previous to the personal experience, use past perfect.
Write down some quick notes about the experience.
Don't worry about grammar. Take five minutes at the end to proofread your essay.
Remember every detail and try to visualize it.
Your feelings
Your thoughts
Objects around you (their shape, color, size, ...)
The smell
The taste
Actions
Include the setting: place, time. (Give specific details about the place and the time.)
Tell the events:
in chronological order
or using a flash back technique (depicting / recalling a set of events that occurred before the scenes immediately proceeding)
Conclusion
Conclude by telling what you learned from the experience.