synthesis essay

Summarizing and

Paraphrasing in

the Synthesis

Essay This essay will require more summarizing and paraphrasing. The introduction must summarize both texts and in each body paragraph you will have to include summary of passages from BOTH texts. Because you are working with multiple texts, paragraphs can get rather long. Read over these guidelines to see when it is appropriate to summarize and paraphrase and how to make paragraphs more concise.

Summaries ​give an overall impression of a writer’s argument or part of one, and also must be identified as representing the ideas of the original as they are placed in drafts of papers.

Paraphrases​ are restatements of a writer’s ideas in your own words, following the source closely in the order in which an argument is developed or evidence is laid out. Paraphrases must be closely identified as such, by direct attribution to the author because they can be mistaken for your own thinking.

Quotations​ are exact repetitions of a writer’s work.

Being able to summarize what a writer said accurately, briefly, and without distorting the meaning is a crucial academic skill.

- Let the author do some of the work of summarizing by looking at the central argument.

- ​Read for a writer’s statements of purpose and argument by checking the right places​: Check the end of the introduction for the thesis/argument/main idea. It’s also often reiterated at the beginning of the conclusion and sometimes at the beginning of paragraphs. Identify key words by skimming first lines. You can usually find the major claims, reasons, and organization of the piece by skimming it.

A quick formula for summarizing a text with an argument (or conflict) in 4 sentences:

- #1 Main Idea: The author raises [name the problem] with [state the purpose].

- #2 Argument: The author argues/brings up the idea that [state main claim/state main idea] by observing that [state main reasons].

- #3 Conclusions: The author concludes [describe conclusions or what the author leaves the reader with].

- #4 Importance: The author proposes [state significance or implications where appropriate.]

Helpful hints:

- Try to keep as near as possible to the level of specificity in the source by including supporting evidence and context as much as possible.

- A final draft would indicate page numbers for any material closely derived from the source. -

If a longer summary is required, more detailed support can be added to each of the four sections. What could we add to make this summary longer?

Sample Summary (225)

Alfie Kohn, in the article "The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation," raises the issue of grade inflation in order to argue that it is not really a problem in most universities, suggesting that grade inflation is actually a myth based on false information, insufficient proof, and an unjustified belief that grades are always valid, despite the subjective opinions and preferences of teachers and curriculum. He documents the unreliability of research used to prove grade inflation and attributes the conclusion that grade inflation is undermining American higher education to the conservative political bias of some researchers. Kohn observes that contemporary students are at least as knowledgeable as those of a century ago, citing data from a U.S.

Department of Education analysis of student grades, and suggests that concerns about grade inflation rest on misreadings of data not directly relevant to measuring student learning. He concludes that claims about grade inflation derive from an uncritical acceptance of the idea that grading should be based on a system of competition and from the assumption that inflexible and strict for the sake of being strict grading practices effectively motivates learning. Kohn proposes that competitive grading itself is destructive to students' intellectual efforts and damaging to educational excellence, citing evidence that students learn better from internal motives and from teachers who expect them to succeed than from competition for grades.

Here, mostly what was added was the reasons for his position, or simply stated, more ideas to support the main ideas focused on in the summary. Note the use of the writer's original language instead of "borrowing" from the original author! ​Also, note how there are NO QUOTATIONS! A summary should not include quotations.

You can also tackle summaries of longer works by trying to do one or two sentence summaries of each section or stage of thought, and then a one or two sentence summary of the work overaIl. If you are working with a narrative, your summary will be a synopsis of what happens. You will want to name and describe the principal characters, the main actions or events, the narrator, and perhaps his or her relationship to the topic. You can still end with conclusions and the author's purpose.

By contrast, paraphrases​ restate an entire sentence, paragraph, etc., ​in your own words​. Like the summary, the paraphrase requires that you understand the material enough to recast a passage, but ​while a summary is shorter than the original​, ​the paraphrase is often the same length as the original​.​ Sometimes paraphrases help to make dense, abstract, archaic, or confusing language more understandable. While summarizing sticks to the general, paraphrasing is about following a line of reasoning in some detail. Analytical papers use paraphrases way more often than summaries because paraphrases typically report only a ‘piece’ or a ‘thread’ of the piece, rather than the entire argument.

To paraphrase

o substitute your own words for those of the source passage.

o Rearrange your sentences so that they read smoothly—you don’t have to base the structure or the order on the original.

When paraphrasing, you still need to cite the author of the text and the page.