What is a synthesis essay, and what are its characteristics and special requirements? The article below will answer your questions and show you how to write this type of essay perfectly. Let’s explore all the information in the section below.
1. What is a synthesis essay?
A synthesis essay is a type of academic essay that combines knowledge or information from different sources to create a new understanding of a specific topic. This essay sets out to present an interconnected argument or thesis statement. At that time, information or knowledge can be summarized and synthesized from many different sources such as books, newspapers, observations, and in-depth research.
A synthesis essay example may include the following features:
- Thesis Statement: Each essay will include a specific and clear thesis statement. The writer will then research and explore that claim throughout the essay.
- Synthesis from many different sources: An essay will require a combination of information and knowledge from many different sources. These sources will include opinions, arguments, or data related to the selected topic.
- Critical analysis: The writer is responsible for analyzing and evaluating information or knowledge obtained from many different sources. Therefore, you will begin to evaluate the pros and cons of the arguments and develop a multi-faceted perspective on the topic.
- Organization: The organization of the essay should be presented logically according to the process of synthesizing information. You can start grouping sources by topic, then arranging them chronologically or categorizing them based on the strength of their arguments.
- Citation and attribution: Proper citation of sources plays an important role in a synthesis essay. This shows recognition and respect for the research and ideas of the original author.
- Criticism and refutation: Critical arguments or opposing views will be mentioned in the essay. These elements will then add depth to the analysis and demonstrate an optimal understanding of the topic.
Synthetic essays are often used in universities to demonstrate critical thinking, complex thinking, and understanding of specific topics by synthesizing information from a variety of sources. Popular topics for these essays are usually science, society, literature, information technology, etc.
8 Steps to write a synthesis essay
Have a deep understanding of the prompt
When writing a synthesis essay, you need to have a deep understanding of essay prompts. The prompt is the instruction that provides you with a solid foundation to create a synthesis essay structure. Therefore, first, you should start by reading the prompt carefully as well as understanding the specific requirements of the essay. Next, continue these process:
- Identify the main theme, concept, or ideas.
- Analyze terms and shape your approach to the essay.
- Understand the purpose of the synthesis essay to inform, persuade, evaluate, and analyze.
- Consider your target audience to avoid affecting the tone, style, or nature of your synthesis essay.
Choose your suitable topic
Three basic factors that you need to keep in mind when choosing a topic for a synthesis essay are personal interests, available resources as well and the difficulty level of the problem. After understanding and clearly defining the prompt, you will begin to consider your interests, hobbies, or passions. This will help you easily develop your essay better.
However, before finalizing your topic selection, be sure to review the available sources to see if they are trustworthy and diverse. Don’t forget to consider the complexity or difficulty of the topic to make the essay writing process easier and smoother.
Collect and analyze a variety of sources
The next important step that you should not skip is collecting and analyzing different sources of information. You can access quality, reputable, and widely used academic databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and JSTOR with many useful newspapers, magazines, and resources. Besides, you can find documents from other media such as academic articles, interviews, reputable websites, and books to increase the richness of the synthesis essay. In addition to online information sources, you can also take advantage of offline methods such as the school library.
After synthesizing the information, you should write a summary of the main arguments of each source as well as the author’s relevant evidence. Next, you will summarize the pluses and minuses of the documents, and evaluate their quality and effectiveness. Always consider the style and tone used to consider the appropriate audience.
Develop a thesis statement
A strong thesis statement developed for a synthesis essay will assist you greatly in developing your essay. After synthesizing and analyzing information sources, start drafting a tentative thesis without being too detailed or precise. Next, create clear relationships between sources of information, find common themes, or propose synthesizing different ideas. Be sure to state your point of view clearly to make the purpose of your essay clear.
Create a well-structured outline
The process of writing a synthesis essay will become easier for you if you have a well-structured outline. At that time, the outline will help you organize your ideas, shape the relationship between information sources, and build logic for the entire essay. A perfect structure for this type of essay would be:
- Introduction: The introduction will include the hook, basic information about the main topic, or a clear thesis statement.
- Body Paragraphs: This is the part where you will present the topic sentences, the connection to the thesis, the synthesis of information, the analysis, and the smooth transition to the next paragraphs.
- Synthesis of arguments: Analysis of patterns, relationships, or similarities with main ideas. Thereafter, discuss how different perspectives will contribute to comprehensive development.
Conclusion: In this section, you will restate your arguments, summarize the main points and synthesis, and end with a thought-provoking statement or recommendation.
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Address potential counterarguments
To demonstrate your thorough understanding of a particular essay topic, you should address the underlying arguments. First, you need to anticipate potential objections related to the thesis or main ideas. Next, combine the counterarguments into the content skillfully and naturally to keep the counterarguments from being separated. One important thing that you should not ignore is to avoid bias or unfairness when presenting criticism.
Citations
In an essay, you need to acknowledge contributions and pay tribute to the original authors with citations. Some popular citation styles that you can apply are APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. depending on the rules of your essay.
Peer review, revise and edit
This is one of the important steps in the process of writing a synthesis essay. Ask for help and feedback from trusted friends and instructors with enough expertise to have an objective look at your essay. Hence, you can ask them to give honest comments to your entire article and edit accordingly. Finally, you read again and carefully check for grammatical errors, spelling errors or even punctuation systems. Don’t forget to keep everything in the same format for consistency.
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Important notes when writing synthesis essay
Analyze and establish connections between sources
Creating cohesion and connections between different sources is an essential factor when writing a synthesis essay. The purpose, then, is to create a discussion that is capable of solid cohesion or integration, not simply a summary of individual sources. This requires a careful balance between comparing, synthesizing, and contrasting information.
Organize the synthesis essay structure effectively
Clarity, coherence, and persuasiveness are what you will get when building a clear and detailed synthesis essay structure. A good structure acts as a mind map to guide the reader, highlight main ideas, establish solid relationships between sources, and present the writer’s well-rounded argument.
Avoid unclear and wordy sentences
Presenting clearly and coherently and avoiding lengthy paragraphs is a way to increase the overall effectiveness of your essay. Cumbersome, long, and rambling content will make readers feel bored and tend to drop out. Meanwhile, brevity and clarity will improve the overall quality of the essay, making it easier for the audience to access and find more attractive.
Maintain an academic and formal tone
Maintaining an academic or formal tone for your synthesis essay will help establish the writer’s reputation, credibility, and professionalism. Therefore, pay attention to the consistent tone from beginning to end.
Proofread and seek feedback
Your essay will be at risk of being unprofessional if you do not thoroughly check it. At that time, errors in grammar, spelling, and writing style will be promptly edited so as not to affect the quality of the entire essay.
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With the information above, it can be seen that creating a synthesis essay requires many complex factors. To get a complete essay, you should carefully follow the above standards or immediately contact a professional writing service like MAAS to stop worrying.
References
- The On-Campus Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University, (2023), Steps for Revising Your Paper, Purdue OWL, DOI: https://owl.purdue.edu
- University of Minnesota, (2015), Chapter 8.4 Revising and Editing, Writing for Success, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, DOI: https://open.lib.umn.edu
