Step 1: Watch and Summarize

For this activity and for your final blog, you are being asked to synthesize. But what does it mean to synthesize?

Watch this video: Synthesizing (FIU Writing Program). Then summarize what it means to synthesize. How is it a thinking skill? How is it a writing skill? Name three pieces of advice from the video and explain how it will help you synthesize your three texts for your final RL Response.

Step 2: Examine Examples of Synthesis

1. Watch the video on "Organizing and Synthesizing Ideas," provided by your textbook.

• How is Carlos synthesizing ideas by using sticky notes in this video?
• We say that with synthesis, you "make something new"--like an argument about a connection between texts--by connecting ideas between texts. The video goes over a few different arguments/analyses that Carlos could create with the same sticky notes. What are these?

2. Adam Westbrook makes a fascinating argument about what caused World War I in theCause and Effect Video.Watch the video.

• Pick at least 2 sources of information used in the video and think carefully about how the speaker pulled them together to support hisnew argument about WWI. First, what is his argument? Second, how do each of these pieces of evidence (name and describe them) support that argument?

Step 4 Do you agree with the statement at the beginning of this assignment that synthesis is a difficult skill to learn? Why or why not? Why is the ability to synthesize an important or valuable skill? Specifically, how can the ability to synthesize make you a more informed writer, consumer, citizen, and/or student? Our current unit has been focused on rhetorical listening, which involves summarizing the main ideas from different texts and then examining the rhetorical strategies the writers use to communicate these main ideas. In what ways is rhetorical listening also an important part of synthesis? How does being able to rhetorically listen to texts make you better able to synthesize texts