Throughout this chapter, our focus has been on writing an Argumentative Synthesis. However, there are assignments in which you are expected to synthesize sources without making an argument. It is important to know about Informative Synthesis writing, which can be a precursor to Argumentative Synthesis or which can be a stand-alone assignment.

What is an Informative Synthesis?

In informative writing, you explain your sources’ arguments and evidence to your readers without taking a position or giving your opinion. Even if the topic is debatable and highly controversial, instead of promoting your personal opinion, your goal is to present other people’s ideas and information objectively. You want to show how your sources’ arguments relate to each other and how their evidence and information may connect and diverge. You do not show your agreement with some authors and disagreement with others. You simply stay neutral, both in your comments about your sources’ information and in your conclusions about the topic.

The Literature Review as a Type of Informative Synthesis Essay

Literature reviews are a type of informative synthesis essay, and they are used most frequently in specific academic fields, especially social sciences, health, and engineering disciplines. Depending on your major, at some point in college, you may be asked to write a literature review.

Literature reviews synthesize previous scholarship that has been written on a particular topic, summarizing the arguments and findings published in important studies throughout the history of scholarship on that topic. The literature review provides context for the author’s own new research. It is the basis and background out of which the author’s research grows. When writers are able to produce a literature review, they demonstrate the breadth of their knowledge about how others have already studied and discussed their topic.

Literature reviews are usually structured chronologically and targeted according to discipline. For instance, you might write a literature review on the topic of grief communication studies, looking at the evolving research in this academic field—asking, for instance, what were the most significant early publications on grief communication? What key research was done on grief communication in the past 20 years? What are the most recent studies published on grief communication? Or you might write a literature review on the topic of “grieving during the pandemic” that is organized by academic field—asking, for instance, what is the current research being done by biologists on this topic? What is the current research being done by psychologists on this topic? What is the current research being done by English scholars on this topic? What is the current research being done by Communication scholars on this topic?

A Literature Review offers only a report on what others have already written about. The literature review does not reflect your own argument or contributions to the field of research. Instead, it indicates that you have read and understand others’ important contributions. In that sense, a literature review is a type of Informative Synthesis Essay.

Synthesis as Exploratory Writing: The Background Synthesis

Literature Reviews are typically assigned in upper-division undergraduate courses and graduate school. Psychology or Biology juniors and seniors will often be required to write a Literature Review as part of a capstone to their major, either as a stand-alone assignment or as precursor to a large project like a senior research paper. While the Literature Review is usually assigned toward the end of earning a degree, there is a similar type of informative synthesis writing that you might be asked to do when you are in the first couple of years of your college studies: the Background Synthesis assignment.

Your instructor may give an assignment that involves background synthesis when you are at the early stages of forming your topic, before you have started the official research process, or before you have developed a thesis. In a background synthesis, you are gathering and synthesizing information with a goal of refining your future project. Through the process of writing a background synthesis, a focus and argument begin to emerge that can then be developed into an essay or research project. In that sense, the background synthesis is a kind of pre-writing.

For instance, you may be interested in doing research on the benefits of theater outreach in our communities. Before you begin the process of research, though, you first need to refine your focus, and to do so, you need to find out some general information about the theater programs that exist. A background synthesis assignment might ask you to use the internet to collect a list of theater outreach programs, writing about your findings as a way of organizing your information and honing your topic. After researching theater outreach programs in the United States, your background synthesis would produce several categories: theater outreach to military bases, assisted living homes, elementary schools, prisons; theater outreach as a tool for healing from post-war PTSD; theater outreach as a way of connecting broken communities during the pandemic; theater outreach to elders. From writing a background synthesis, you might decide to focus your paper on the positive effects of musical theater on Alzheimer’s patients, and then you would begin the process of researching the library databases once you know your specific topic.

As our discussion of the background synthesis suggests, synthesis is crucial component of composition. Synthesis is a part of every stage of the process—and sometimes every sentence—of college writing.

Works Cited

“Writing a Synthesis Essay.” The Learning Commons. Bowling Green State

University. https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/learning-commons/

documents/writing/synthesis/planning-synthesis-essay.pdf

Swift, Taylor and Aaron Brooking Dessner. “Cardigan,” Folklore. Republic

Records, 24 July 2020.

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29 Sept. 2020. Patrick Semansky / Associated Press.

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