Synthesizing Sources
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Synthesizing means making connections among ideas from texts and from the writer’s own experience. Once you have analyzed a number of sources on your topic, consider questions like the following to help you synthesize ideas and information:
- Do any of the sources you read use similar approaches or come to similar conclusions? What common themes do they explore? Do any of them use the same evidence (facts, statistics, research studies, examples) to support their claims?
- What differentiates their various positions? Where do the writers disagree, and why? Does one writer seem to be responding to or challenging one or more of the others?
- Do you agree with some sources and disagree with others? What makes one source more convincing than the others? Do any of the sources you have read offer support for your claims? Do any of them challenge your conclusions? If so, can you refute the challenge or do you need to concede a point?
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Sentence strategies like the following can help you clarify where you differ from or agree with the sources you have read:
- A study by X supports my position by demonstrating that .
- X and Y think this issue is about . But what is really at stake here is .
- X claims that . But I agree with Y, who argues that .
- On this issue, X and Y say . Although I understand and to some degree sympathize with their point of view, I agree with Z that this is ultimately a question of .
To learn more about synthesis, see Chapter 12.
The paragraph from Patrick O’Malley’s paper on p. 700 shows how ideas and information from sources can be synthesized to support the writer’s claim.