For the most part, your purpose in Project 1 was to inform readers, to simply te

For the most part, your purpose in Project 1 was to inform readers, to simply tell them about someone else’s ideas as presented in writing. This time, your purpose is to persuade.
To do so, your argument will draw on two essays, found on the “Source Selection for Project 1” Canvas page in our course site. We’ve already written about one of those essays. Here are the options from Bad Ideas About Writing listed again:
“Some People Are Just Born Good Writers” – Jill Parrot
“Strong Writing and Writers Don’t Need Revision” – Laura Giovanelli
“There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking” – Anjali Pattanayak
“African American English is Not Good English” – Jennifer M. Cunningham
“Official American English Is Best” – Steven Alvarez
Components of the Synthesis Essay
Introduction
Your introduction should set the stage for your audience. And yes, there are a lot of ways to handle that work, but no matter what, the introduction should lead up to a strong thesis statement, which presents in a single sentence your argument about the ideas that your two other writers consider in their own essays.
Body Paragraphs
Each body paragraph should present one key point in support of your thesis; this key point should be presented at the start of the body paragraph, in the topic sentence. Each body paragraph must incorporate evidence (in the form of summary, paraphrase, or direct quotation) from your sources as well as analysis.
Here’s one of the important challenges you face in Project 2: Do not organize your paragraphs so that you have one paragraph per source. The goal of this essay is to bring you together with those two authors for a conversation (not in real life, of course!) about some bad ideas about writing. That’s a lot more interesting—and enjoyable—than simply summarizing some other folks.
Conclusion
Your conclusion should summarize your main points, restate your thesis, and (again) show your reader how the conversation, so to speak, has expanded your own thinking on the matter. Your expanded thought can take many forms: you might advise your audience on how they can apply your lesson to their teaching, or you might remind them of the ways in which doing so will impact their students’ approaches to writing.
Works Cited List
A Project 2 submission has to include a bibliography on a separate page at the very end of the essay. If you format your essay according to MLA style, we title that last page “Works Cited.” If you prefer the APA style for your submission, title that bibliography “References.” Whatever it’s called, the concluding bibliography gives your audience some very important information.
Each article should have its own bibliographic entry, and the entry should be double-spaced with hanging indents. Entries should be alphabetized by the author’s last name. Remember to always have a style guide of some sort handy, like the ones we find in Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) pages. For MLA help, use this OWL guide; there is a separate OWL style guide for APA and Chicago formats too.