write a synthesis paragraph in which my own claim governs and three sources serve it, and revise a report-style paragraph into a braided one.
Workbook: page 10 of your Unit 4 Student Workbook (this is the Stage 1 organizer: draft it here, then submit it online). Draft on paper first; anything scored is submitted online in this lesson.
Instruction
Most first research papers are not arguments. They are reports: a paragraph on what the first source says, a paragraph on the second, a paragraph on the third, and a conclusion announcing that the topic is complex. The structure is the giveaway — if your outline is a list of sources, you are reporting.
Synthesis means your claim governs the paragraph and the sources are brought in because the claim needs them. The test is mechanical: look at your topic sentences. If a source’s name is the subject of the sentence, the paragraph belongs to the source.
Compare.
Reporting: “Wilson argues that the violence of Book 22 is deliberately excessive. She points out that Homer lingers on the deaths of the maids. This shows the poem is violent.”
Braided: “The poem’s most sustained violence arrives only after Odysseus is safe, which is the pattern that makes a community-based reading of his restraint hard to sustain. Homer lingers over the killing of the maids long past narrative necessity — a lingering Wilson reads as deliberate excess rather than epic convention (Wilson 24) — and the excess matters here because the suitors’ offense was itself a violation of the code Odysseus is enforcing. When the enforcement of a code produces more cruelty than the breach did, the code is not functioning as a restraint. Stevenson’s professional circle does the same work by the opposite method: it enforces nothing and produces Hyde.”
Look at what the second version does. The claim is in the first sentence. The source arrives mid-sentence, inside the writer’s own syntax, doing a job. The analysis outweighs the borrowing. And the last sentence reaches for the second text, which is what makes it synthesis rather than commentary.
Three moves that produce braiding.
- Put sources in conversation, not in sequence. Use the connective vocabulary of agreement and dispute: where X emphasizes… Y is more concerned with…; this is the point at which the two readings diverge. Two sources that agree should be cited together in one clause, not given a paragraph each.
- Let a source be wrong. You may disagree with a secondary source, and doing so well is the strongest evidence of understanding. Represent it fairly first — the Unit 2 counterclaim discipline applies here too.
- Keep the ratio. In any paragraph, your sentences must outnumber the borrowed material. If they do not, cut the borrowing rather than adding filler.
The annotated bibliography, due today as part of Stage 1. Each entry: full MLA citation, then exactly two sentences — what this source contributes to your argument, and where its authority, purpose or currency limits it. The second sentence is scored, and “there are no limitations” is never the correct answer.
One more discipline. Your research question from Lesson 4.1 has probably moved by now. Restate it at the top of your Stage 1 submission in its current form. Narrowing a question in response to evidence is the behavior W.9-10.7 names explicitly, and it is scored.
Reading: Synthesis as braiding: mentor paragraphs (Stevenson, Butler), a before-and-after revision and the Stage 1 criteria
R. L. Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams, in Across the Plains (1892), Project Gutenberg 614; Homer, The Odyssey, tr. Samuel Butler (1900), Project Gutenberg 1727; retrieved 26 Sept. 2026 · SLS original; quoted passages are public domain (Stevenson, 1892; Homer, tr. Butler, 1900)
Study the mentor paragraph first, then the revision and its check, before you draft your own braided paragraph.
What is hosted. The workshop asks you to write a braided synthesis paragraph and revise a report-style paragraph into one. It needs a mentor paragraph to study, a model to compare against, a before-and-after revision with a way to check it, and the criteria Stage 1 is scored against. Mentor texts: Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Chapter on Dreams,” in Across the Plains (1892), Project Gutenberg 614, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/614; Samuel Butler, preface to the first edition of his translation of Homer, The Odyssey (1900), Project Gutenberg 1727, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727. Both retrieved 26 Sept. 2026, wording as in the editions. The student model, the revision, the checklist and the rubric are SLS original and are not by any student or author named on this page.
1. A mentor paragraph: the claim governs, the evidence serves
Stevenson is not writing an MLA paper, but this paragraph does what a braided paragraph does. Read it once for the claim, then once for how each piece of evidence is brought in.
Stevenson (1892), a paragraph from A Chapter on Dreams
I can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and what part awake, and leave the reader to share what laurels there are, at his own nod, between myself and my collaborators; and to do this I will first take a book that a number of persons have been polite enough to read, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man’s double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had even written one, The Travelling Companion, which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that Jekyll had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the third person. For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously, although I think I can trace in much of it the manner of my Brownies. The meaning of the tale is therefore mine, and had long pre-existed in my garden of Adonis, and tried one body after another in vain; indeed, I do most of the morality, worse luck! and my Brownies have not a rudiment of what we call a conscience. Mine, too, is the setting, mine the characters. All that was given me was the matter of three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary. Will it be thought ungenerous, after I have been so liberally ladling out praise to my unseen collaborators, if I here toss them over, bound hand and foot, into the arena of the critics? For the business of the powders, which so many have censured, is, I am relieved to say, not mine at all but the Brownies’.
What to notice (SLS original). The first sentence says what the paragraph will do (give instances of what is done asleep and what awake); the writer’s own claim, that the meaning of the tale is his, appears in the middle and governs what follows; the “source”, his own dream, arrives inside his sentence and does a job (it accounts for the scene at the window); and the last sentence surrenders the powders to the Brownies, a concession that sharpens the claim about the moral. The writer’s sentences outnumber his borrowing, and the paragraph does not begin with the name of a source.
2. A second mentor: conceding without losing the paragraph
Butler (1900), from the preface
Without, therefore, for a moment pretending to think that scholars generally acquiesce in my conclusions, I shall act as thinking them little likely so to gainsay me as that it will be incumbent upon me to reply, and shall confine myself to translating the “Odyssey” for English readers, with such notes as I think will be found useful.
What to notice (SLS original). Butler grants that scholars do not generally agree with him. He does not withdraw the claim. The concession is one clause; the next clause states what he will do anyway. That is the shape of the fair representation of a source you disagree with: state the other side accurately, then say what you are doing about it.
3. The test in the lesson, applied
The lesson says: if a source’s name is the subject of the topic sentence, the paragraph belongs to the source. Apply that to the mentor paragraph above. Its first sentence has I as its subject, and no source’s name appears before the writer’s own claim. In Butler’s sentence the subject is again the writer.
4. A before-and-after revision (SLS original)
The topic is responsibility in the two anchor texts. The sources are the two hosted texts, so every quotation can be checked.
Before (a report). Zeus says in Book 1 that men blame the gods for their own folly. Stevenson says that the meaning of his tale is his own. Both texts are about who is responsible. In conclusion, the topic is complex.
What is wrong with it. Every sentence begins with a source or a topic; there is no claim; the two sources are in sequence, not in conversation; nothing the writer thinks appears anywhere; the last sentence announces complexity instead of arguing.
After (braided). Both anchor texts place the question of who is answerable at the front of the work, and both, in their authors’ own voices, give the same answer: the human being is. Zeus opens the Odyssey by complaining that men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly
(Butler, Book 1), and the poem then holds its characters to that standard from Aegisthus to the suitors. Stevenson plays the same hand from the other side. He hands the mechanical business of the powders to his dream-helpers and keeps the moral for himself: The meaning of the tale is therefore mine
(Stevenson). What the two share is a refusal to let the supernatural or the unconscious carry the moral weight, and that is where the semester’s question begins to bite: if the individual is answerable, then a community’s code is a check on him and not an excuse for him.
5. Checking the revision, mechanically (SLS original)
| Check | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Whose name is the subject of each sentence? | Zeus (in effect the source), Stevenson, both texts, the topic: no sentence belongs to the writer. | Both anchor texts, Zeus, Stevenson, the two authors, the question: the claim leads and each source serves it. |
| Where does the claim appear? | Nowhere. | The first sentence. |
| How do the sources arrive? | In sequence, one per sentence. | Mid-sentence, in the writer’s syntax, with a citation, and joined by the phrase plays the same hand from the other side. |
| Ratio of own sentences to borrowed material | Two borrowed and two of the writer’s own, one of which is empty. | Four sentences of the writer’s own with two short quotations inside them. |
| Does the last sentence reach for the second text? | It announces complexity. | It carries the argument toward the semester’s question and ties both texts to it. |
6. Two model bibliography entries (SLS original)
Stevenson, Robert Louis. “A Chapter on Dreams.” Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays, 1892. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/614. Accessed 26 Sept. 2026. Stevenson gives the only first-hand account of which parts of the Jekyll story he says he dreamed, and I use it to show where he places the moral. It is one person’s account, unsupported by a second witness, so I cite it for what he says and not for what happened.
Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Samuel Butler, 1900. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727. Accessed 26 Sept. 2026. This is a prose translation with no line numbers, so I cite Book numbers. It supplies the Zeus speech in Book 1 that frames responsibility, and it is a translator’s choice of wording, so I quote it as Butler’s English and not as Homer’s Greek.
7. Stage 1 criteria (SLS original)
| Criterion | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Research question, and how it changed (W.9-10.7) | A question both anchor texts can answer, with one sentence naming how it changed and what caused the change. | A workable question; the change is named but not explained. | The question fits one text only. | No question, or a topic. |
| Annotated bibliography (W.9-10.8) | Both anchor texts and at least two vetted secondary sources; every entry has two sentences: contribution and limit. | All sources present; one or two annotations lack the limit. | Fewer than the required sources, or annotations that summarize. | A list of titles. |
| Braided paragraph (W.9-10.7, W.9-10.9.a) | Claim in the first sentence; at least two sources arrive inside the writer’s syntax; the writer’s sentences outnumber the borrowed material; the last sentence reaches the second text. | Claim present, sources braided, ratio unclear or last sentence weaker. | Sources are in sequence; the claim is a topic. | A report with no claim. |
| Citation (W.9-10.8, L.9-10.2.c) | Signal phrases and accurate MLA parentheticals throughout; every parenthetical has a Works Cited entry. | Minor errors in form. | Some borrowed material has no citation. | No citations. |
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Which topic sentence indicates a synthesis paragraph rather than a report paragraph?
Changing your research question partway through the project is a sign that the research was poorly planned.
Submit Stage 1: (1) your research question in its current form, with one sentence on how it changed and why; (2) your annotated bibliography — both anchor texts and at least two vetted secondary sources, each with the two-sentence annotation; (3) one fully drafted braided synthesis paragraph in which your claim governs, at least two sources appear, and your own sentences outnumber the borrowed material.
How confident are you that you can look at my own topic sentences and tell whether the paragraph belongs to me or to my source?