Putting It All Together: Thesis + Synthesis

By Matt Smith, Writing Instructor and Coordinator of Graduate Writing Initiatives

You’ve probably heard the term thesis before from a writing teacher, and we comment on this often in the Writing Center as well because almost any scholarly document—from a discussion post to a dissertation—must have some kind of central, guiding purpose. You may not, however, have heard much about synthesis, or you may have only heard it mentioned vaguely. Synthesis doesn’t get quite as much attention as a thesis does, which is a shame: it’s really just as important. Without it, your document would lack cohesion, and your reader would have to work much harder to understand the overall meaning of your work.

If you look at the etymological roots of the word synthesis, you’ll find that it basically means “to put together.” Pair it with analysis, which means “to take apart,” and you’ve got two of the most fundamental functions of academic work—taking information apart and putting it back together to make something new. In your time at Walden, you’ve probably developed strong analytical skills, and you’ve practiced demonstrating this analysis in your discussion posts and course papers. You’ve probably been synthesizing too, but synthesis is often less explicit than analysis because it mainly involves the connections between ideas rather than the ideas themselves. This can make it difficult to identify and even more difficult to add more of when your peers, Writing Center instructors, or faculty members suggest that a spot in your text doesn’t have enough of it.

Put another way, text without synthesis is like bricks without mortar: you have the essential substance, but there’s nothing to hold it together, rendering the whole thing formless and unable to support the argumentative weight of your thesis.

Text without synthesis (above) and with synthesis (below).

If you think you need to add synthesis in your writing, or if someone else has suggested this, you may be wondering how, exactly, to do so. This can be tricky, because synthesis can look different from one situation to another. To effectively detect synthesis (or a lack thereof), you’ll need to think about the function of a sentence or paragraph rather than its structure or content—or, in other words, you’ll need to determine what the sentence accomplishes rather than how it looks.

If you’re looking at a portion of text that doesn’t quite fit with the rest, ask yourself these questions as you read:

• Does this text logically follow from the sentence or paragraph that comes before it?
• Does it contribute to and support my overall argument?
• Are its connections to the other ideas in my text clear?

Let’s try this with an example paragraph taken from a literature review.

Arter (2008) pointed out that, since the early twentieth century, strain theories have been used to describe crime and delinquency. In his study, Arter used general strain theory as a theoretical framework to test the application of the theory on a highly stressed adult population and to determine how officers in different policing assignments cope with stress and deviance. Arter also utilized phenomenological methodology to mitigate one of the criticisms of the general strain theory, the argument that individuals experiencing the same or similar circumstances often react differently to deviance or delinquency.

Notice that this paragraph contains useful evidence and analysis, and, if I asked myself the above questions with regards to this text, my answer to the first one would have to be “yes.” However, I’d answer “no” to the second and third questions, because there’s nothing here that explicitly shows the reader how Arter’s work relates to the overall thesis or to the other ideas in the paper. This is a pretty strong indication, then, that this paragraph would benefit from some additional synthesis. I might add a sentence like this to clarify these connections:

Arter (2008) pointed out that, since the early twentieth century, strain theories have been used to describe crime and delinquency.  In his study, Arter used general strain theory as a theoretical framework to test the application of the theory on a highly stressed adult population and to determine how officers in different policing assignments cope with stress and deviance.  Arter also utilized phenomenological methodology to mitigate one of the criticisms of the general strain theory, the argument that individuals experiencing the same or similar circumstances often react differently to deviance or delinquency. The benefits of this phenomenological approach make Arter’s study a more effective model for my own research than Adams’s (2008) or Ilford’s (2010).

Note that this is just one way to synthesize this material; another writer would handle it differently, and in other situations this approach—adding a concluding sentence—may not be appropriate. Sometimes, for instance, it may make more sense to devote an entire paragraph to a piece of synthesis, showing how a major component of your text relates to other major components (this usually occurs in longer documents like dissertations or doctoral studies); at other times, you might synthesize within another sentence that focuses on your topic, your evidence, or your analysis. Whatever the situation, you’ll want to focus on the function of a given sentence or paragraph and its connections to the rest of your text to identify synthesis or places in need of it.

Matt Smith, who earned a BA in English from Saint John's University and an MFA in writing from Hamline University, says, "It's at once paradoxical and commonsensical, but it's true: you get better at writing by writing."