The Writing Center is an invaluable resource for all your writing questions. They can work with you on the purpose paragraph, thesis statement, citations, outline, and summarizing while avoiding plagiarism.
This semester, the Writing Center is fully online. Make an appointment online or ask for email help.
You may need to go back and find a few more sources to supplement any gaps in your research. This is a great time to meet with me to talk about anything you missed or want to improve.
Remember the Annotated Bibliography skills will still be useful for this part of your project, so if you need help finding more sources, reading, summarizing, or evaluating, be sure to go back to the Annotated Bibliography page on this Guide.
Synthesizing various sources together into a clear, cohesive argument is one of the most difficult parts of the research process, but you can practice this just like you would anything else!
Many students end up writing one paragraph on Source A, and then a separate paragraph on Source B, and then another on Source C. If you can integrate them together, it shows research maturity and complex critical thinking.
The best way to practice this is to do it - take any two of your articles and write a short paragraph where you integrate both. You can also start by practicing on something lower stakes, such as two Facebook posts or two UTM Department websites.
Ways sources might go together:
Play around with different ways to compare, contrast, and combine articles.
Due Sunday, November 6
The purpose of this assignment is to arrange the evidence from your sources into a coherent, logical structure. For this assignment, you will create an expanded outline of a research, synthesis paper using evidence-based arguments with citations in multiple paragraphs followed by a reference list of the academic sources used. The outline consists of three main sections: introduction, literature review, and conclusions. For this assignment, there is no magic number of references needed or required. However, it is likely that you will need at least the 10 primary, academic sources used for the previous assignment and possibly some others. Additionally, there is no page requirement for this assignment, but please use the example below as an example of what is expected for a high mark.
The introduction must consist of one to two sections: 1) paragraph covering the indication of problem with supporting background information and/or 2) paragraph covering the justification for review of topic ending with clear purpose statement. The literature review will consist of (at least) two subsections of paragraphs based on your topic. The conclusions must consist of three sections: 1) paragraph covering the summary of research 2) paragraph covering directions for future research 3) paragraph covering practical implications.