A Guide to Synthesizing Sources What is a synthesis? A synthesis is a written discussion incorporating support from several sources of similar or differing views.
A synthesis is a written discussion that draws on one or more sources. It follows that your ability to write syntheses depends on your ability to infer relationships among sources - essays, articles, fiction, and also nonwritten sources, such as lectures, interviews, observations.
In an academic synthesis, you make explicit the relationships that you have inferred among separate sources. It will frequently be helpful for your readers if you provide at least partial summaries of sources in your synthesis essays. At the same time, you must go beyond summary to make judgments - judgments based, of course, on your critical reading of your sources - as you have practiced in your reading responses and in class discussions.
You should already have drawn some conclusions about the quality and validity of these sources; and you should know how much you agree or disagree with the points made in your sources and the reasons for your agreement or disagreement.
Further, you must go beyond the critique of individual sources to determine the relationship among them. Is the information in source B, for example, an extended illustration of the generalizations in source A? Would it be useful to compare and contrast source C with source B?
Having read and considered sources A, B, and C, can you infer something else - D not a source, but your own idea? Because a synthesis is based on two or more sources, you will need to be selective when choosing information from each.
It would be neither possible nor desirable, for instance, to discuss in a ten-page paper on the battle of Wounded Knee every point that the authors of two books make about their subject. What you as a writer must do is select the ideas and information from each source that best allow you to achieve your purpose.
PURPOSE Your purpose in reading source materials and then in drawing upon them to write your own material is often reflected in the wording of an assignment. For example, your assignment may ask that you evaluate a text, argue a position on a topic, explain cause and effect relationships, or compare and contrast items.
What you find worthy of detailed analysis in Source A may be mentioned only in passing by your classmate.
Since the very essence of synthesis is the combining of information and ideas, you must have some basis on which to combine them.
Some relationships among the material in you sources must make them worth sythesizing. It follows that the better able you are to discover such relationships, the better able you will be to use your sources in writing syntheses.
Your purpose in writing based on your assignment will determine how you relate your source materials to one another.
Your purpose in writing determines which sources you use, which parts of them you use, at which points in your essay you use them, and in what manner you relate them to one another. An explanatory synthesis helps readers to understand a topic.
Writers explain when they divide a subject into its component parts and present them to the reader in a clear and orderly fashion. Explanations may entail descriptions that re-create in words some object, place, event, sequence of events, or state of affairs.
The purpose in writing an explanatory essay is not to argue a particular point, but rather to present the facts in a reasonably objective manner. The explanatory synthesis does not go much beyond what is obvious from a careful reading of the sources.
You will not be writing explanatory synthesis essays in this course. However, at times your argumentative synthesis essays will include sections that are explanatory in nature.
The purpose of an argument synthesis is for you to present your own point of view - supported, of course, by relevant facts, drawn from sources, and presented in a logical manner.
The thesis of an argumentative essay is debatable.A comprehensive, coeducational Catholic High school Diocese of Wollongong - Albion Park Act Justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with your God Micah SOURCE: "Wilfred Owen: World War and Family Romance," in University of Hartford Studies in Literature, Vol.
XIV, No. 2, , pp. [ In the following excerpt, Butler examines Owen's unconscious personal conflicts as a source of his poetry's power. Goldsmiths, University of London is in South East London.
We offer undergraduate and postgraduate degrees as well as teacher training (PGCE), Study Abroad and short courses. A synthesis is a written discussion incorporating support from several sources of similar or differing views.
This type of assignment requires that you examine a variety of sources and identify their relationship to your thesis. View Essay - Synthesis Essay from ENG-W at Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis. Owen Spencer W 11/19/14 Synthesis Essay Beneath our Noses The study of food deals with the.
A HSC Wilfred Owen Essay for Module B of Standard English. It's analysis focuses on "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce Et Decorum Est". Contains the standard structure for an essay, with synthesis links to "Futility".