2.0 Synthesis Essay Overview

Student Outcomes:

As a result of this unit and assignment, students will be able to:

• Identify and synthesize main ideas within different types of texts
• Summarize and paraphrase from academic texts effectively without plagiarizing
• Recognize different types of plagiarism and correct specific plagiarism errors
• Create in-text citations and bibliographies to attribute and locate sources

Assignment Description:

Students will practice summarizing 3 articles (you can find them at the bottom of this post) to gain practice in appropriate integration and synthesis of source material. The articles will be introduced separately and specific class time will be dedicated to writing a paragraph summary for one of the articles selected by the teacher. For the final assignment, students will submit:
1) the summary of articles #1, and 
2) an informative synthesis essay. 
Both the summary and the essay should be provided with feedback from the instructor and revised at least once by the student. Standard APA citation style will be used to gain practice in appropriate attributive language and avoiding plagiarism. The thesis statement of the synthesis essay could be one of the following: 
a) compare/contrast on a common idea, 
b) discussion of main themes or issues related to the topic, or 
c) claim to an argument with support from the three sources. 

Assignment Prompt & Grading Rubric

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3 Articles:

Topic: Alternatives to Animal Testing

Article #1: Alternatives to animal testing gaining ground (assignment)

Article #2: The Price of Killing Off Animal Testing (for practice)

Article #3: Avoiding Animal Testing (for practice)

Previous student's sample: 

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