ENGL 015 – Synthesis Essay Assignment Sheet
You will create a synthesis essay, based on the material that you gathered and annotated in the Annotated Bibliography assignment.
This essay should be 1500-2000 words, with standard academic writing components: Times New Roman, 12-point font; 1-inch margins; double spacing.
As discussed in class, please be sure to do more than a serialized book review – you are to have an introduction, a thesis statement, and a conclusion. Simply cutting and pasting the material from the annotated bibliography into the new essay will not suffice. You should be synthesizing it, digesting it, putting it together in new and interesting ways, and bringing the various sources into conversations with each other.
Remember our basic premise – all writing is persuasive at its core. Your choice of materials, your thesis, your arrangement of the materials into a form supporting your thesis… all of it comes together to persuade. In this case, it persuades gently. In other cases, such as in Assignment 3, it will persuade forcefully. But objectivity is not the goal here, because it is not possible.
You must use either APA or MLA style for the bibliographic entries and in-text citations on this assignment, and the accuracy of your use of the style will be carefully examined. The OWL at Purdue (online) is the best resource for both styles. DO NOT rely on Easy Bib or other such sites – most have NOT been updated to the most recent editions of the writing styles.