Synthesis Paper
Make your introductory paragraph interesting. How can you draw
your readers in?
What background information, if any, do we need to know in order
to understand your claim? If you don’t follow this paragraph with a
background information paragraph, insert that info here.
Topic Sentence: What is one item, fact, detail, or example you can tell your
readers that will help them better understand your claim/paper topic? Your
answer should be the topic sentence for this paragraph.
Explain Topic Sentence: Do you need to explain your topic sentence? If so,
do so here.
Introduce Evidence: Introduce your evidence either in a few words (As Dr.
Brown states ―…‖) or in a full sentence (―To understand this issue we first
need to look at statistics).
State Evidence: What supporting evidence (reasons, examples, facts,
statistics, and/or quotations) can you include to prove/support/explain your
topic sentence?
Explain Evidence: How should we read or interpret the evidence you are
providing us? How does this evidence prove the point you are trying to make
in this paragraph? Can be opinion based and is often at least 1-3 sentences.
What possible argument might your reader pose against your argument
and/or some aspect of your reasoning? Insert one or more of those
Your conclusion should not simply restate your intro paragraph. If your
conclusion says almost the exact same thing as your introduction, it may
indicate that you have not done enough critical thinking during the course of
your essay (since you ended up right where you started).
Your conclusion should tell us why we should care about your paper. What is
the significance of your claim? Why is it important to you as the writer or to
me as the reader? What information should you or I take away from this?
Your conclusion should create a sense of movement to a more complex
understanding of the subject of your paper. By the end of your essay, you
should have worked through your ideas enough so that your reader
understands what you have argued and is ready to hear the larger point (i.e.
the “so what”) you want to make about your topic.
Your conclusion should serve as the climax of your paper. So, save your
strongest analytical points for the end of your essay, and use them to drive
your conclusion