How do You Write a Synthesis Essay? You Use the Right Method
How many research papers do you figure you have written so far in your schooling career? Probably almost as many as the number of courses you have had in high school and college. You need to think of a synthesis essay as almost the same thing but on a smaller scale.
What is a Synthesis Essay?
The definition is quite simple. It is a piece of writing that presents information from multiple sources in an organized way. How do you write one? Well you are about to be shown how to write a synthesis essay step by step.
- Pick Your Topic. In choosing a topic, be sure to make it broad enough that there will be sources available for research. You may have full freedom to choose your topic (usually in an English course) or you may have options within a broad topic area. If, for example, you are in a sociology class and your broad area is social media, obviously you will not be choosing that area for an essay topic. Pick one platform or one type of user behavior as a topic.
- Decide on a Purpose: There are really three purposes for a synthesis essay, and part of knowing how to write a synthesis essay is find a purpose that fits your topic.
- Argumentative: You will form an opinion and use several resources to gather information that will support your opinion.
- Review: You will review resources to report on what has already been written on a topic and will be adding more to the discussion. This is usually at the graduate level when primary research is studied in preparation for a thesis or dissertation.
- Explanatory: Here you will providing an objective presentation of information and/or data. An example of this might be a white paper produced by a business.
- Locate Your Sources and Conduct the Research: This step is self-explanatory. Be certain that your sources are credible. If you are writing an explanatory piece on scientific theories of the origin of the universe, for example, you are probably not going to find objective material in a fundamental evangelical publication.
- Come Up with Your Thesis: go back through your notes. What have you learned? Has your opinion been supported? What is the most important thing the reader should know?
- Combine the Research Information Based Upon Sub-Topics: In an essay, you will have 3-4 sub-topics. In any essay on origin of the Universe, several authors will have addressed the Big-Bang theory. Put all of your notes related to that theory in one stack. You should know that technology can make this easier. If you use something like “Dropbox,” you can already have your notes for each sub-topic in one place.
- Make Your Priority List: In what order will you cover your sub-topics. If a full outline works better for you, compose one.
- You’re Ready to Write: You know the drill now. Write your rough draft, revise it, and craft your final product, ensuring that you have cited our sources properly.
If you are now thinking that writing a synthesis essay is much like a research paper, you are absolutely correct. The topic will be far narrower; you will probably not use as many resources. But the process will be essentially the same.