1. "Men feel liberated to become secretaries"
2. "New Research Suggests Mixed-Gender high schools perpetuate the Gender Gap"
3. "Pentagon Allows Women Closer to Combat"
4. "Guys and Dolls No More"
5. "How to Attack the Gender Gap"
6. "Swedish School's begin with dropping pronouns"
7. "Video Games: Let Girls be Girls"
8. " I Want a Wife" Essay
What is a Synthesis Essay?
The main purpose of a synthesis essay is to make
insightful connections. Those connections can
show the relationship(s) between parts of a work or even
between two or more works. It is your job to
explain why those relationships are important. In order to
write a successful synthesis essay, you must
gather research on your chosen topic, discover meaningful
connections throughout your research, and
develop a unique and interesting argument or perspective.
A synthesis is not a summary. A synthesis is an opportunity to create new
knowledge out of
already existing knowledge, i.e., other sources. You
combine, “synthesize,” the information in your
sources to develop an argument or a unique perspective on
a topic. Your thesis statement becomes a
one-sentence claim that presents your perspective and
identifies the new knowledge that you will
create.
Before writing your synthesis
1. Narrow a broad or general topic to a specific topic:
In a short essay, completely covering a large topic is impossible,
so picking a specific, focused topic is
important. For example, the broad topic of global warming
would need to be narrowed down to
something more specific, like the effects of automobile
exhaust on an ecosystem.
2. Develop a working thesis statement:
A working thesis statement should include a rough idea of
your topic and the important point you
want to make about that topic. Writing this statement at
the top of a rough draft or outline and
looking at it often can help you remain focused throughout
the essay. However, the thesis
statement that you begin with is not set in stone. If you
find that your essay shifts topic slightly, you
can change your thesis in later drafts so that it matches
your new focus.
3. Decide how you will use your sources:
After completing your research and gathering sources, you
may have a large or overwhelming
amount of information. However, the purpose of a synthesis
essay is to use only the most important
parts of your research, the information that will best
support your claim. At this point, you must
decide which sources, and/or which parts of those sources,
you will use.
4. Organize your research:
Now, decide the order in which you will present your
evidence, the various arguments you will
employ, and how you will convince your readers.
Example we discussed in class:
The increasing American
involvement in Vietnam can be traced to at
least three flawed attitudes. The first
was a belief that the United States
was on the side of right and justice and
that the communists were the
aggressors. The second was the assumption
that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong
had little grass-roots support in the
South and that the people of South
Vietnam welcomed American protection. The
third was the unshakable confidence
in the military’s ability to accomplish
anything it wanted owing to the
superiority of the American fighting man
and his technology-a belief
instilled by a long history of wars fought
and won by U.S. troops. This
combination
of self-righteousness and arrogance blinded America to the
realities
of the situation in Vietnam.
America was sure that its military intervention in South
Vietnam was morally
right.
Defenders
of the war saw the conflict in terms of the forces of evil
(communism) against the forces of good
(freedom). Supporters of intervention
believed that to refuse aid was to abandon
the peaceful and democratic nation
of South Vietnam to “communist
enslavement” (“Public Hearings” 977).
President Johnson painted a picture of a
“small and brave” nation beleaguered
by communist aggression. The president
asked “only that the people of South
Vietnam be allowed to guide their country
in their own way” (Johnson, ”War
Aims” 976). Congress had already agreed;
in its Gulf of Tonkin resolution in
1964, it accused the communists of
carrying out an unprovoked attack on
American naval vessels and said that this
attack was only part of a larger
attack on the “freedom” of the South
(971). Some of the fighting men tended
to see the war in black-and-white terms,
with the communists as evil and
Americans as good. After witnessing some
brutalities committed by the Viet
Cong, one soldier wrote: “I wanted to go
down and kill all
those…bastards…Those slobs have to be
stopped, even if it takes every last
believer in a democracy and a free way of
life to do it” (“War of Atrocities”
974).
