Writing Assignment #3 will be a synthesis essay, a format that is sometimes referred to as a literature review.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Please click here for a video that briefly describes and outlines this writing assignment.<\/p>\n
Organization:<\/p>\n
Your synthesis essay should be organized in the following manner:<\/p>\n
Approach:<\/p>\n
This semester, you have critiqued an author\u2019s analysis in the critique essay and have critically evaluated several articles in the annotated bibliography.\u00a0 In this assignment you will synthesize the ideas of several authors in a synthesis essay, or literature review.<\/p>\n
For your annotated bibliography, you selected a topic based on your interests and, possibly, your major.\u00a0 You constructed a list of 12 references and summarized and critically analyzed them in 150-200 words each.<\/p>\n
Through this process, you may have seen patterns in the scholarly literature in the topic on which you conducted research.\u00a0 For example, consider the following examples:<\/p>\n
In the synthesis essay, you will focus your research efforts in a particular area, perhaps as a response to what you found while writing the annotated bibliography.\u00a0 You will then conduct more research and synthesize your findings in this synthesis essay.<\/p>\n
Please note that the annotated bibliography was the beginning, not the end, of your research.\u00a0 You might decide to disregard several of the articles you analyzed in the critical annotated bibliography because they don\u2019t speak to the specific area on which you have decided to write your synthesis essay.\u00a0 You might select one article that you analyzed in the critical annotated bibliography, look up the articles cited in that article, and \u201csnowball\u201d your research in that way.<\/p>\n
In other words, this process is a recursive one.\u00a0 You might find reasons to hone in on and narrow your topic even further after you have written the annotated bibliography.<\/p>\n
How to organize the synthesis essay:<\/p>\n
When you have focused on your topic, determine how you will divide the literature.\u00a0 In other words, consider the following examples we described above:<\/p>\n
You may have researched studies in criminal justice and found that there are varying opinions on how to respond to criminal behavior among youth.<\/p>\n
You might divide the paper as follows:<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/p>\n
Body<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
In order for you to see this concept with a real-life example, you can access a sample synthesis or literature review from a psychology student by clicking here. The student writes her paper on the following topic: Emotional Eating: The Perpetual Cycle of Mood-Food Influence. She divides her literature into the following categories:<\/p>\n
Notice how she synthesizes and integrates the research into the different categories.<\/p>\n
Approach and Requirements<\/p>\n
Your synthesis essay, or literature review, should be 2000-2500 words, not including your \u201creferences\u201d pages at the end of the review.\u00a0 In other words, the text of the paper should be 2000-2500 words.<\/p>\n
In addition your synthesis essay should include at least 10 scholarly sources in the \u201creferences\u201d section.\u00a0 As stated above, this means that you may decide not to use all 12 sources that you summarized in your annotated bibliography.\u00a0 You are free to use all 12 of them.\u00a0 However, it is possible that your experience in writing summaries of the 12 sources led you to conclude that a few of them will not be as helpful to your topic as you had originally thought.\u00a0 You may decide not to include such sources in the synthesis essay.\u00a0 This is totally up to you.\u00a0 Moreover, you might find other sources that you would like to include in your synthesis essay that were not included in your annotated bibliography.\u00a0 You may use such sources in your synthesis essay as well.<\/p>\n
Some helpful tutorials and guides from UMUC\u2019s Effective Writing Center:<\/p>\n
Click here for a tutorial that features two short videos on writing a literature review.<\/p>\n
Click here for a tutorial on principles in synthesizing multiple sources.<\/p>\n
In synthesizing your research, you are analyzing the topic on which you have conducted research.\u00a0 Click here for a helpful tutorial on analyzing a topic.<\/p>\n
Some helpful guides from other universities:<\/p>\n
Some very systematic advice from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can be accessed by clicking here.<\/p>\n
Some helpful advice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison can be accessed by clicking here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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