Synthesis: Connecting Various Ideas From Various Authors Together

When writing a piece, you have to be logical in your approach on relationships. How would you connect M to N or A to E? 

If you were talking to a friend, how do you outline your ideas about the best from a list? Essentially, you use "organizing relationship" words like "both" or "none" or "either" or "although" to distinguish texts.  

Somewhere in your claims, when you are talking about large-scale ideas that relate to you and other authors, you have to use these types of words within your speech--and hence, within your writing claims.  

The length, the depth, of which you make relationship claim is up to your purposes: both the thesis purpose and your subtopic purpose. In other words, if an idea is really, really, really, really, really, really important--you are going to expand on that relationship claim with lots of reasons and evidence. 

Some of the general actions you can take, as topic sentence claims:

1. Claim a point that more than one author has, and attribute that point to each author.

• ex:  Both _______ and ________ .... |  All ______(three, four, five, ...) authors....

2. Claim one point of disagreement, and clarify each author's stance.

• ex.:  Although __________ believes _________, ________ believes ___________.
• ex.: _______ and ______ find state __________, yet ________ argues ________.

3. Claim a point agreed upon and one part of that point where two or more authors disagree.

• ex.:  Both support _____________; however, _________ believes ________ and _______ counters that ___________.

4. What other relationships do you find between your sources/examples?  

Writing a Synthesis paragraph

• What purpose do I want this paragraph to have?  (This is key: you are the writer, and you must realize that you control what type of point you want to make, especially in research.)

• What relationship words do I need to use in my topic sentence claim and in my reasoning sentences?  

• What is the best evidence to use from each source material? (Yes, cite a clear quote or provide a concise summary of the idea from each author. Again, the length of the evidence is dictated by purpose--your purpose.)

• Organize your ideas before you write the paragraph*. Use a column chart, pull out a quote from each source that discusses the same subject matter.
• Active Reading
• Pre-writing 
• Outline

*The stronger, clearer, more effective arguments come from a writer who knows how to stay focused on the same idea--not just on "topic."  

• Name your paragraphs for yourself:  "This is my 'definition of life' paragraph for my abortion issue essay"  or "This is my 'the problem with using IQ to measure academic success' paragraph"

• Sometimes a writer will shift subject matter from X to Y so subtly that he or she doesn't realize they are trying to write about Author 1's views on X and Author 2's views on Y when they should be writing about both author's views on X, then--if needed--both author's views on Y.

• Professional writers and speakers (politicians and partisan thinkers and PR firms and lawyers) may try to intentionally shift topics because it benefits their own views to address the argument made--this is called a 'red herring.'

Let's practice with today's case study...

• Practice writing a paragraph in which you synthesize a comparison point
• Practice writing a paragraph in which you synthesize a contrasting point
• Practice writing a paragraph in which you show both a comparison and contrast on a subject.