![]() You use the information you find to help create and support your own, unique thoughts.Įxample of Synthesis in an Academic SettingĪ research paper is the classic example of synthesis in an academic setting. However, reading and writing to synthesize involves more than just finding information and inserting it into an essay, report, or proposal. When you research a topic, you find information from many different sources which informs your personal thoughts and assertion about that topic. Skills that you develop in researching and synthesizing information also transfer to writing a business report or proposal. One standard example of reading and writing to synthesize is a research paper–a basic assignment in many college courses. You react to those pieces of information and relate them to your insight, to create something new–your own reasoned argument. You extract appropriate pieces of information from each source, information that relates to your insight in some way (supporting it, negating it, offering additional detail). Reading and writing to synthesize means that you read information from many sources relating to a particular topic, question, insight, or assertion. View the following video for a basic definition of, and introduction to, the concept of synthesis.Īs stated in the video, synthesis means combining similar information to create something new. If you choose and combine carefully, with the end result (supporting your main idea) in mind, the ingredients will be both separate and well-blended, with all ingredients contributing as they should to the final taste. Synthesis is like combining different ingredients to make a stew. ![]() Once you examine content and choose the parts to synthesize, you need to express those parts in your own language in order to create a coherent whole in terms of writing style. The concept of a “coherent whole” is important in terms of language, too. So you have to look for relationships 1) among the sources’ themes and 2) between these themes and your own ideas in order to blend all of the pieces to make a coherent whole. When you synthesize in writing, you examine different types of information (ideas, examples, statistics, etc., from different sources) and different themes (perspectives and concepts) from different sources with the purpose of blending them together to help explain one main idea. The concept of a “coherent whole” is essential to synthesis. As The American Heritage Dictionary states, synthesis means “the combining of separate elements or substances to form a coherent whole.” Synthesis becomes more of a conscious act when you write, since you have to actively select pieces of information that make sense together. You synthesize automatically when you read, as you relate “new” text information to previous knowledge and create the new “whole” of your knowledge in a field. When you synthesize, you start with different, unrelated parts, and search out relationships in order to put the parts together to make a new whole. When you analyze, you break a whole into its parts and examine how the parts relate to one another in order to judge the quality of the whole.
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