The Essence of a Synthesis Essay

A synthesis essay is a paper based on researching an object or an action by singling out individual parts in order to better understand the meaning. You can analyze everything: a poem, a text, an act, spoken words, and so on. The main thing is to follow certain rules. The synthesis method also helps to reveal your personal perception.

How to Create a Synthesis Essay

This task includes many parameters, which make it easier to understand the essence of such a paper. Although there is no clear instruction or scheme, it is necessary to adhere to a plan to compose a synthesis essay. You can determine the topic and answer the question, "What did the author want to say with this text?"

It is worth remembering that the topic is the subject of reasoning. A theme is a collection of topics that can be in the proposed work. It is also necessary to determine whether synonyms, repetitions, conjunctions, verbs, and gerunds should be used.

We should also mention the style of the text, which can be official, business, scientific or colloquial. It should be clarified which type of speech is used: narrative, reasoning or description.

Steps of Creation a Synthesis Essay

In accordance with the instructions described above, it is possible to draw up a plan for creating a synthesis essay. Here are a few steps that will help you to analyze the text consistently and not to miss important details.

• Read the text. When reading, use intonation accents, highlighting both individual words and semantic segments.
• Remember what you know about the author.
• To which functional style of speech does the text belong?
• What is the genre of the text?
• What mood prevails in the work?
• Define the theme of the text.
• If the text does not have a title, suggest your own one. If the heading is there, think about its meaning (Why was this title chosen by the author?).
• Divide the work into semantic parts; make a plan of the text.
• How are the parts of the text related? Pay attention to lexical and syntactic means of communication (repeating words, syntactic parallels or, conversely, a sharp change in syntactic constructions and intonation with the help of word order).
• How do the beginning and the end of the text correspond each other?
• In what way is the text constructed (contrast, gradual strengthening of feeling, gradual development of thought, rapid change of events, dynamism, unhurried contemplation, etc.)?
• Mark the main images of the text (do not forget about the role of the author).
• Observe the lexicon of the text, find unknown or incomprehensible words and write down their meaning in the vocabulary. Pay attention to the spelling of these words.

It can be concluded that such type of essay is the example of synthesis, which is the connection of certain elements of the text with others. It means that you should not just read the text and understand what the writer is talking about, but also analyze its structural elements.