synthesizing information

Synthesizing is a type of highly valued critical thinking by academia, business, industry and other institutions especially the ones that reward innovation and creative thinking; you're basically immersing yourself into the information until it feels familiar to you. Many students use highlighters to stay organized with this process: Marking with blue for the parts that mentioned a; marking with green for the parts that talk about issue B; etc. you're looking for connections within your sources to bring together what they say about your topic to help support the claim you're making. You can use the following to strategize:

  1. Which source helps to set up the context for your argument? Which one presents new information or give your audience and incentive for reading your work?

[THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS NOT SUMMARIZED]

  1. Which items provide background information that is essential for anyone trying to understand your argument?

  2. Which items help to define, clarify or explain key concepts of your case? How can these sources be presented or sequenced so that readers appreciate your claims as valid or, at a minimum, reasonable?

  3. Which sources appeal most effectively to your audiences emotions? To the rational thinking of logic? Which sources help to establish your credibility?

  4. Which of your sources might be used to illustrate technical or difficult aspects of your subject? Would it be best to summarize such technical information to make it more accessible, or would direct quotations be more authoritative and convincing?

  5. Which sources (or passages within sources) furnished the best support or evidence for each claim or submit claim within your argument? Now is the time to group these together so you can decide how to arrange them most effectively.

  6. Which materials do the best job outlining conflicts or offering counter arguments to claims within the project? Which sources might help you address any important injections or rebuttals?

Some guidelines for paraphrasing effectively

  1. Stay the source of the paraphrase and mention its significance of its author.

  2. Maintain the chronological order the author uses.

  3. If your paraphrasing information that exceeds past more than one page, notate the Page's numbers and the location of page breaks.

  4. Keep your own opinions or comments, elaborations or reactions apart from the paraphrase itself.

  5. Comment or label next to the paraphrase suggesting how and where you intend to use it in your argument