In my PhD I am researching methods to to detect reflection automatically . Based on a large body of sentences, which were manually labelled as either reflective or descriptive, I tested several text classification algorithms. Each classifier generates a model, which can be used to classify unseen text.
Based on these models I built ReflectR. ReflectR is a tool that you can use to test the classification of sentences. It will analyse your input and will tell you if your sentence is reflective or descriptive/non-reflective. ReflectR will also tell you how confident it is with classifying your text. Have a go and try it yourself at http://qone.eu/reflectr. It is free to use. Once the text is classified please leave feedback. Your feedback is most valuable to my research!
One way to start with ReflectR is to have a look at the examples at the bottom of the page. This will give you a feeling about reflective and descriptive sentences.
If you cannot think of an experience you were deeply were thinking about, start with a descriptive sentence. Write about what happened. This writing exercise might help you to kick-start the reflective thought process. Later you can start writing about yourself. Write in the first person perspective, for example about your beliefs, your feelings, why and how you changed your perspective about something, etc.
ReflectR aims to be a demonstrator for the automated detection of reflection in texts. You could for example use he underlying technology to analyse forum posts of a learning environment. The classification results will give you an overview at which stage of the course people were engaged in reflective thinking.