A synthesis essay is a sort of academic essay that combines or composes various components or elements from many sources to form a complete essay. In high school and college, usually it is among the common assignments. The synthesis essay basically requires you to do an in-depth research and gather facts from among many sources and then blend these together into a cohesive whole. It is an important element in any composition.
A synthesis essay can be written as a research paper and can be written in the form of a review of a book or a newspaper article. In the course of your research, you may come across statements, events, or even facts that seem to fit together in a way that you have never seen before. It is in fact, often more difficult to write a review than it would be to actually put those facts together. Thus, in order to effectively do a review, a writer needs a proper framework to work from. This is where the idea of what is a synthesis essay comes in.
A thesis is the central point of your composition. In many cases, you will present a thesis throughout your assignment. However, the difficulty will arise when you need to integrate your thesis statements with the other sources that you have gathered from your research. In general most students get stuck on the idea of what is a synthesis essay. Because of this, here are some guidelines that you should consider following in writing your own synthesis:
- Choose a reliable publishing house for your writing. If you are presenting information from a personal perspective, such as your personal observations, then it will be more appropriate to use a publishing house that caters to personal essays. On the other hand, if you are presenting a scientific data or facts, then you can choose a peer-reviewed journal for your research paper. When selecting the venue for your synthesis essay, make sure that you are free from any form of bias when choosing which source materials to include and which to leave out.
- Once you have a clear picture of what your research project entails, it is time to make the outline. When writing a synthesis essay outline, make sure that you make a list of all the research findings and sources that you will be incorporating in your essay. In addition to listing these items, you must also take notes so that you will be able to refer back to your outline in case you need to revise anything in your essay. Take notes on what is included in what, when it was done, what the focus was, what results you were expecting, etc.
- As you go through your writing process and formulation, it will be necessary for you to move through different levels of complexity. At some point, your synthesis essay will require you to conduct interviews or to engage in discussions with various individuals from different levels of expertise. At this time, it will be important for you to be aware of what is required in completing these tasks. It will help you if you have already developed a plan in regards to what is expected from you in terms of research, writing up all the possible outcomes and the logistics of writing up all these different levels of complexity.