Aug 17, 2020

How to Write a Synthesis Essay

A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing a Synthesis Essay

Essay writing has always confused students. While your pals write informative or argumentative essays, you are left alone with a synthesis essay. What on earth is it? Does it imply synthesizing new materials for NASA rovers?

When you yourself have no idea what a synthesis essay is and just how to write one, you’re in the right place. Today, you will see all about writing synthesis essays, from outline specifics to editing methods for the highest grades. So check always the synthesis essay definition below.

What is a Synthesis Essay?

A synthesis essay definition may appear daunting, however it appears straightforward if you know what synthesis means. To synthesize means to combine and mix different parts into a whole. In essay writing, synthesizing means researching, reviewing, and evaluating various sources and deriving conclusions based on these sources. Put simply, writing a synthesis essay means getting back together ideas and conclusions on the basis of the reviewed information. Scholars differentiate a couple of synthesis essay types:

Expository Synthesis Essay

An informative/expository synthesis essay aims to explain a notion or idea comprehensively and leave any questions behind. For instance, medical reviews fall under the explanatory synthesis writing category. Basically, for a medical overview, one collects, evaluates, and analyzes different medical studies to synthesize a conclusion.

Argumentative Synthesis Writing

An argumentative synthesis essay aims to prove a thesis statement with different sourced elements of evidence. For instance , let’s say your topic is: Do video games trigger violence in teenagers? Once you understand the subject, you may start researching it and collecting both supporting and disproving evidence.

Then, you will produce the thesis statement. Inside it, you can make the next statement: insufficient supervision and living conditions, systemic humiliation, and corporal punishment as opposed to video games will be the main drivers of youth violence.

From then on, you will provide supportive evidence and evaluate counterarguments, like everyone else will do while writing a normal argumentative essay. However , the amount of sources may be the crucial point that differentiates a synthesis essay from an argumentative one. In a synthesis essay, you will need to derive a particular thesis-supporting argument from at least three sources.

The Purpose of a Synthesis Essay

Writing a synthesis essay is focused on evaluating and synthesizing different research pieces or proving your thesis with arguments based on multiple sources.

In terms of a synthesis essay being an academic writing task, it has the following purposes:

  • To let you practice analyzing different information sources
  • To enhance your research skills
  • To improve your critical and logical thinking
  • To enhance your power to back up your statements and a few ideas

How to Choose a Topic for a Synthesis Essay?

Picking a topic for a synthesis essay could be challenging since a significant element of your writing success is dependent upon the selected or given subject. It’s much better to decide on a theme for the essay all on your own since this provides you a whole lot more space for creativity. Now let’s check always some methods for picking the most effective subject for the synthesis essay:

Choose a Controversial Topic

Our planet orbits the sun's rays, and there's nothing to argue on. Who does ever disagree with that? Therefore , you need to avoid non-debatable topics. Otherwise, you will don't build a written discussion as you will find it difficult to bring meaningful counter-evidence to your thesis.

Choose a Well-Researched Topic

You might write a synthesis essay on a subject of your interest. It’s a fantastic approach so long as you can do enough research on your own subject. In the event that you fail to find relevant studies, you will have to switch to a different, well-researched idea.

Focus on Specific Ideas

Choosing some generic topics like discrimination will force you to scatter your attention around the subject’s different aspects. Are you going to write about racial or age discrimination? In the usa or Mongolia? The topic of inequality is too generic to cover all its aspects in a single essay. Consequently, you'll need to pick narrower subjects like pregnancy discrimination in the workspace, as an example.

Check for Meaningful Ideas

You might struggle to produce the topic for the essay, and that’s normal. To saturate your mind with compelling some ideas, you need to do some brainstorming and appearance up for synthesis essay topics on the net or in books. You might find hundreds of essay topics and choose the one you like probably the most.

How To Write a Synthesis Essay?

Writing a synthesis essay involves the following steps:

  • Researching the topic
  • Checking for valid information sources
  • Creating an essay outline
  • Developing a thesis statement
  • Analyzing sources to support your thesis statement
  • Writing your essay
  • Proofreading your paper
  • Getting a high grade

MEAL Approach

The MEAL approach is an excellent solution to arrange the body paragraphs in order that they sound clear and logical. MEAL means:

Main Idea

The primary idea means the same as a thesis statement, except that it pertains to a particular paragraph rather than a whole paper. This is a topic sentence that opens an essay body section.

Evidence

Evidence serves to spell out a paragraph’s main idea in a paper and supports it with facts and statistics.

ANALYSIS

Once you've found striking evidence for the paragraph’s topic sentence, the analysis can be used to answer the ‘so what’ question and give meaning to your arguments.

Link

A hyperlink is used in summary an essay body section and connect it to another location one.

Over all, an essay paragraph provides the following:

  1. The main idea/topic sentence
  2. Evidence
  3. ANALYSIS
  4. The link/conclusion/transition to some other body section

Synthesis Essay Outline

Make-up an outline after deciding on your topic and checking sources. Don’t hesitate to write headings since you will elaborate to them while writing your draft.

You are able to follow a classic five-paragraph structure and modify it depending on your topic complexity and required word count. So check always the synthesis essay structure below:

Introduction

Steps to start a synthesis essay the correct way? An essay introduction contains several elements:

  1. A hook. Begin your essay with a striking passage to grab readers’ attention. It could be a provocative question, an eye-opening fact, or shocking statistics about your topic.
  2. Back ground information. After placing the essay hook, you need to describe to your reader why your topic matters. So include a handful of sentences relating to your subject’s significance.
  3. A thesis statement. Finally, you will need to include the primary idea that you'll describe in your essay – that'll be your thesis statement. By the end of your introduction, you need to produce a smooth and logical transition to the body paragraphs.

Body

In the primary part, you can as many paragraphs as you will need to cover your topic to the fullest.

Let’s assume you may write about whether animal testing is justified. Your paper body may possibly look like this:

H2 What is Animal Testing?

H2 Top Animal Testing Applications

H3 Animal Testing in Producing Save Products and services for Humans

H3 Animal Testing in Developing New Treatments

H3 Animal Testing for Genetic Studies

H2 Top Reasons to Avoid Animal Testing

H2 Animal Testing Alternatives

H3 Flaws of Current Animal Testing Alternatives

H2 Seeking a Reasonable Compromise

Conclusion

A synthesis essay conclusion summarizes the entire essay and answers whether your thesis statement makes sense or not. An essay finale should also contain several elements:

  1. A rephrased thesis statement
  2. A summary of your essay’s body sections
  3. One last closing sentence to sum up the complete paper

Synthesis Essay Examples

Although writing a synthesis essay is a task not everyone else can complete excellently from the first attempt, it is much simpler to do that after you have relevant samples to lean on. Feel free to check always the following synthesis essay example and put it to use as a basis for your own personel writing:

https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/5159/assignments/43280

Synthesis Essay Writing Tips

The following suggestions will help you finish your synthesis essay an hour or two earlier than usual and get a greater grade at precisely the same time. So check always the pro writing guidelines below:

Outline your essay

“I’ll think of my essay later. I’ll produce ideas without writing an overview first. ” That’s a typical yet wrong approach because you will neglect to follow the essay direction this way. Besides, you will spend additional time thinking of your essay some ideas instead of having a prepared foundation for writing them out.

Use Writing Tools

Developing a reference list, editing, and proofreading your essay by yourself is the right approach. But why not use writing tools to save time on building your bibliography and spotting more errors? The following tools will help raise your grades:

  • Citation machines for organizing your synthesis essay format and listing used sources.
  • Grammar and spelling checkers. A good principle is to use Grammarly to polish your text.
  • Plagiarism checkers to make certain your piece is 100% unique.

Elaborate on Your Essay Introduction in the End

A skilled essay writer will edit their paper introduction in the long run, after the conclusion is done. Soon after using all research, constructing arguments, and grasping all angles of one's topic you may make a much more engaging essay introduction.

Besides, you can elaborate on your thesis statement. So editing your introduction is a superb way to make your paper sound more convincing and logical.

Effective Proofreading Approaches

Many articles on line will inform you how to write a synthesis essay. But only a few will explain just how to edit and proofread one. In practice, editing is as crucial as writing. You should never neglect this part. So follow these tips to edit and proofread your essay such as a pro:

  • Grammar and spelling checkers are a must
  • Let your eyes have an escape. Once you finish your draft, take at the least half an hour off. The crucial point is to distract yourself from writing with this period. Then, return to your piece and commence editing.
  • Make use of a different font to proofread your piece. In this way, you may trick your mind that your text is something it hasn’t previously seen. This approach will allow you to spot more errors.
  • Enlarge your font. Increasing the font size will help you spot more spelling mistakes.
  • Proofread your essay three times. First, elaborate on the logic, style, tone, and consistency of your writing. For the 2nd time, check always your text for grammatical and spelling mistakes. For the third time, reread your text.

Write My Synthesis Essay for Me, Please!

Synthesis writing now is easier than most students think. In practice, most of the “complicated synthesis stuff” means generating arguments based on multiple sources. Indeed, some concepts and terms might seem complex because of their sophisticated name. Yet, writing synthesis essays is pretty easy.

But if you have a great deal of assignments along with academic writing, you can ask our expert Ph. D. writers to craft well-researched, original papers for you. Feel free to register on our website and place an order.