AP English Language

STEP 4
Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High

CHAPTER 10

Comprehensive Review—Synthesis

A Few Comments Before Beginning

Your AP Language class, as well as other courses across the curriculum, has taught you how to conduct, evaluate, and present research. You most likely have completed at least one research paper that required you to develop a thesis on a particular subject; to find, read, and annotate outside sources related to the topic; to determine which of the sources to use in support of your thesis; to incorporate these sources into your research paper; and to appropriately cite your sources.

If you’ve written this type of paper before, whether brief or lengthy, you’re well on your way to being able to compose a successful synthesis essay.

The synthesis essay also requires you to be familiar with both analysis and argument. Because of this, we strongly urge you to review Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9. Those skills needed to develop a successful essay of analysis or argument are requisites for composing a synthesis essay.

This chapter briefly reviews strategies and provides you with practice activities specifically related to writing the synthesis essay as it would most probably appear on the AP English Language exam.

Let’s begin.

Note: We will use the synthesis prompt and sample essay from the Diagnostic Master exam (Chapter 3) as the basis for the following review segments.