hey guys welcome back to coach all rights in today's video we're going to be talking about how to write a synthesis essay this is question one on the a peeling exam now this video is going to be more of a tips video as opposed to a demo so if you're looking to improve your synthesis essay writing make sure you follow these tips and thinking about previous ap lying synthesis prompts there have been some prompts that were pretty approachable they were topics that students were probably readily familiar with but other times they were topics that seemed a bit more obscure either way the college board is going to give you some context so it's really important to actually read the context paragraph to figure out the different perspectives on the issue i like to ask myself why are people talking about this issue what are the different sides of this issue and then sometimes it's also helpful to think why would the college board put this prompt on the exam so it's helpful to read the context first but you also need to read the prompt itself and usually the prompt is phrased in more of a statement form as opposed to a question but sometimes if you take that statement and turn it into a question it can actually help as you're trying to plan your essay it can also be helpful to try to brainstorm a tentative position before you actually start to read the sources though i wouldn't say this is mandatory but it can sometimes help so let's talk about these sources on the a peeling exam there are going to be between six and eight sources and at least one of those sources is going to be a visual text so it could be something like a chart or a picture or a cartoon a graph something that you have to interpret so sometimes those seem easier because you don't have to read much of anything but at the same time they can be a little bit tricky as far as how to work those into your argument so it's really important that you actually read the provided information above each source you're going to see a box and there's going to be a citation in that box so you know where that source came from the year it was published things like that so definitely look at that and also look at the italicized information from the college board because they usually give you a sentence above the source that tells you what the source is about so don't ignore that information because it can be very helpful as you're approaching the sources you're going to want to identify the position or the argument of each source that you read or look at so this could be that it's in favor of something or against something maybe it's neutral and this can help you as you're trying to figure out which sources you want to use to support your own arguments now one thing that my students often ask me is for exam day do we have to read all the sources because sometimes it seems like there are a lot of them and the answer is honestly no if you know that you can't use a certain source it doesn't agree with your position or you're not really sure what it means or how to use it don't even look at it just keep moving on now something else that you might want to think about is that for visual text let's say it's one of the first few sources like maybe source a b or c it's possible that you might look at that source and not really know how to interpret it not really know what to do with it right away that's okay you can actually skip it temporarily go and read some of the other sources and then maybe you'll better understand that visual text so sometimes it's okay to go past that source and then come back to it the sources aren't really in any particular order either so if one of them seems really hard in the beginning it doesn't mean that all the sources are going to be that way so just make sure that you are pacing yourself correctly but make sure that you're also annotating those sources so especially if you intend to use a source it can be really helpful to have a system in place i like to take bullet point notes i like to actually write out some of the quotes that i intend to use because you want to embed short quotes in your essay some people like to circle things or put stars or box words or underline them all that's fine remember though that you can't use a highlighter on the exam so you want to have a system where your annotations make sense to you in addition to noting the main idea of the source and also some quotes that you might be able to use it can also be really helpful to try to come up with some commentary as you're reading the source so i like to have my students use what i call strong verbs or power verbs so these are verbs like highlights illustrates suggests demonstrates things like that and so i have them make a bullet point and use a strong verb and then try to kind of like complete that sentence so this helps students kind of situate their thoughts in the broader context of the issue that way they know how they're going to use that source in their essay after reading the sources but before you actually start writing your essay it is very helpful to create a quick outline now notice i said a quick outline this doesn't have to be very detailed especially for the exam because you do want to spend the bulk of your time writing your essay however if you think of an outline as a blueprint it's really helpful for you to figure out the direction your essay is going this will also help you establish a line of reasoning so you want your argument to be logical you want your ideas to progress well and so making an outline can help with this so you can do a simple bullet point outline or you can do something like a mind map with circles i've even had some students draw a tree so i will insert a couple pictures of some stuff i put on my board for my students in case you're wondering what the tree looks like i did actually use it in a separate video as well so i will link that at the end of this video but it's really important to make sure that you have an idea of where you're going and which sources you're going to use because it's really important to cite three different sources if you don't that's automatically going to make sure that you have a lower score you don't want to shortchange yourself points just because you didn't cite sources properly so it can be helpful to figure out which sources you're going to use and which paragraphs they're going to go into before you actually start writing that essay because a synthesis essay is basically an argument essay with sources some students like to include a concession and refutation or a counter claim and rebuttal and so if you do want to include one of these you would want to note that in your outline as well in a synthesis essay you are going to be developing a position and so it's very important that you have a defensible thesis statement because this is where you actually assert your position so this can be a relatively simple sentence or it can be a bit more complicated if you want to try something like a counter-argument thesis statement now some of my students have asked can i do a simple thesis in the beginning of my essay and can i restate it in a more complex way at the end is that okay and the answer is yes oftentimes it's better to restate your thesis and your conclusion and use different words anyway and sometimes if it wasn't defensible the first time it can be defensible the second time and you still get that point so if you're the type of person who likes to kind of figure out their position as they go or maybe you need to just warm up a little bit go ahead and make sure that you're asserting a position but don't waste too much time on your intro because the bulk of your score is actually going to come from your body paragraphs so as long as you have a defensible thesis that's what you're looking for something else to consider with a thesis statement is that you don't want to try to advocate for both sides of an issue equally so even with a counter-argument thesis you are still taking a side and that's what we mean when we say assert a position so you want to be specific and you want to be clear but make sure that you're not trying to say something like oh it can be both good and bad because then you haven't actually asserted a position so let's talk about how you actually select the sources that you're going to use because remember you do need to cite three different sources so for example if you cite source b twice that does not count as two sources it's still just one source so when you're thinking about your sources remember that a synthesis essay is a conversation of sources and i know that's a weird expression so let me explain what i mean by that you don't want to summarize the sources you're not writing a summary you want to put these sources into a conversation you want to use them to support your own argument so one of the things that you can do is actually look for relationships between the sources are there two sources that have a similar stance are there sources that contradict each other how can you put these sources into a conversation in your essay so i generally recommend that students find at least two sources that support their arguments and then maybe one that they can set up a counter claim and rebuttal for now you can definitely use more than three but you need a minimum of three and it's also important to remember that you don't actually get any kind of bonus points if you use all of your sources it's not necessarily going to impress your reader so don't just try to stuff in all the sources because you think more is better you want to use them selectively you also don't want to use these huge quotes from your sources because those aren't your own words so the bulk of your essay should be your own original thoughts and commentary but you need to use the sources as a way to prove your argument now let's talk about how to cite your sources so for a typical ap exam you're actually going to get two different booklets one is going to have all your essay prompts in it including the sources for the synthesis essay the other one is your writing booklet where you actually write your essays in it and so when you look at that first page for the synthesis essay it's going to have the context and the prompt and they're also going to show you how to cite those sources and there's two different ways you can do it so you want to pick one method and just be consistent most of my students just cite the sources as source a or source b they use the letter name but there's also the option to cite the author's name so they give you both of those as well so just choose one method and stick to it you also want to practice doing something called a parenthetical citation so parenthetical comes from the word parentheses you want to put the source name in parentheses at the end of the sentence so even if there's words after the quote that you're using the parenthetical citation goes at the end and then you actually put the period outside that parentheses now they don't take off points if you don't format it correctly but i do believe this is a life skill because if you've ever done like mla format or apa format you're probably pretty familiar with parenthetical citations one of the benefits of parenthetical citations is that they don't really interrupt the flow of your essay because they're at the end of the sentence so sometimes students like to try to lead into their evidence by saying something to the effect of according to source c and while that's not wrong it's maybe not as effective as a parenthetical citation i think most students would agree that commentary is probably the hardest part of any aplang essay so commentary is analysis it's your own original thoughts and interpretations and you need more commentary than evidence so the commentary actually explains the significance of the evidence and helps you connect that evidence back to your thesis so when you're thinking about commentary one thing that you could do is you could ask yourself some of these questions that i've listed here now these are not the only questions that you can ask yourself but i tried to make these broad so that they would be applicable to a variety of prompts but one of the things you want to think about is perhaps who would be affected by this issue positively or negatively or what will happen if we do this particular thing what will happen if we don't things like that so examine the implications of the issue at hand and this can help you develop some of your commentary and think about some perhaps real world applications that can help you situate it in a broader context as well training for the ap exam is an awful lot like training for a marathon you don't just start out running 26.2 miles on day one and so one of the things that often intimidates students is the fact that the pacing for an essay like this seems pretty quick it seems like you don't have a whole lot of time so if you look at a release prompt you might notice that you're given about 15 minutes for a reading period and they recommend 40 minutes to write the essay so that's the exam standard for may at the time i'm recording this video it's october and so i give my own students longer than those recommended windows so they can get comfortable with the expectations of the task you want to make sure you understand how to do it and give yourself a little bit more time and then gradually pull back on that time to simulate the expectations of the exam all right guys i am on a mission this year to help as many appealing teachers and students as possible and i need your help with this so do me a huge favor and hit that like button share this video with your ap lang peers or your apling teacher and if you are an appealing teacher check out the description box below i would love to connect with you on social media until next time guys happy writing