PSY 333: Cognitive Psychology : Synthesizing Information

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Synthesizing is an important and complex skill required in academic writing. Synthesizing involves combining ideas from a range of sources in order to group and present common ideas or arguments. It is a necessary skill used in essays, literature reviews and other forms of academic writing.

Unlike summarizing and paraphrasing, which only uses one author's ideas at a time, synthesizing combines ideas from more than one text or source.
Synthesizing allows you to:

• combine information and ideas from multiple sources to develop and strengthen your argument(s)
• demonstrate that you have read widely on the topic
• use and cite multiple sources.

Use the following steps to synthesize information from different sources.

• Read relevant material.
• Make brief notes using key points / keywords. This makes it easier to compare and contrast relevant information.
• Identify common ideas.
• Cite (reference) all the authors you have used.