How to Write a Synthesis Essay?

Synthesis essay requires you to put together different ideas from various sources and present them in your voice in order to describe them.  You need to find two sources that have information pertaining to your topic.  Find information that offers two different or opposing ideas, and then interpret them to give your own standpoint. A good piece of advice is to be selective when choosing information to present in your paper.

Following are some important tips that will help you write a proper synthesis essay:

•    You need to go through different sources from printed materials like books, newspapers and magazines to scientific studies or audio/visual sources like movies, documentaries etc in order to get some good ideas. Make notes of important information as you go ahead with your research.

•    After you have conducted thorough research on your topic and get ideas, you need to formulate a thesis. It must be concise and short, and clearly present the purpose of your paper. Make it powerful enough to grab attention of the readers.

•    Now, you need to make an outline. This is a proper organizational plan of your essay. Consider how you want to go about writing your essay and how the information will be presented in it. Keep in mind to make a proper order of information in your outline and include your sources in it.

•    Start your essay with introductory paragraph. This is where you need to provide the sources that you intend to combine in your essay. Include the name of author and title of each source and summarize their ideas. Here you need to introduce the thesis of your essay, ideally in the last sentence of the paragraph.

•    Next comes the body section of your essay. Here, you need to write about ideas that you have gathered from your research in order to support your thesis. Compare and contrast them to inform the readers about the similarities and differences between them. Remember! Always quote the sources properly and according to the given citation style like APA, MLA, and Harvard etc.

•    Wrap up your whole essay. This is the last part of your essay. Here, you need to remind the readers about the arguments that you have presented in the body and link the readers back to your thesis. Moreover, you can tell them to further research certain elements of your topic that you could not discuss due to the parameters of your research.

•    Lastly, you have to edit your essay to make it free from any grammar, revision, spelling or punctuation issues.