Critical Thinking and Writing Strategies: Summary, Analysis, Evaluation, and Synthesis

Students at all levels of composition instruction often have difficulty understanding what we mean by summary, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis as processes and even more difficulty in producing writing assignments that focus primarily on one or another. Since Composition II is primarily a course that deals with analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, many students eventually learn the differences through repeated exposure, but to shorten the learning curve, several approaches can work.

First, it helps to discuss the processes in relation to one another, even early in a course when the emphasis is likely to be on the simplest of the four, summary; and we can begin by defining terms:

• Summarize: select only the main points: goal: clarity and compression
• Analyze: break into pieces to better understand the whole that has been summarized
• Evaluate: express an opinion based on criteria and supported through specific examples and thorough explanations arrived at by careful analysis.
• Synthesize: combine pieces to create a new whole arrived at through summary, analysis, and evaluation

Before we move into larger assignments that we call “a summary,” “an analysis,” “an evaluation,” or “a synthesis,” we can discuss how the processes work together. For example, to gather the material for a summary, a writer must be able to analyze a text to determine a thesis, main ideas, and significant examples. To select material, the writer must evaluate which ideas and examples are most essential to communicate the author’s central point, and to present the material in a coherent whole, the writer must synthesize.

One effective way to illustrate these points is to have students analyze a single paragraph of, say, 150-200 words for its main points and significant examples. Next, students can summarize the main points, and then in groups and whole class discussion, they can compare summaries.

For help with synthesis, you might offer several brief paragraphs from different authors writing on a common topic, say, global warming, ask students to identify significant points in each paragraph, and then to combine this information to develop a topic sentence that you provide, for example: “Some researchers contend that earth has already reached the tipping point, and all that humanity can now do is limit the extent of planetary destruction.” Synthesizing key elements from several authors in this manner also helps introduce students practice using sources to develop their ideas.

When the class moves beyond summary as an individual assignment into evaluation, of course, analysis is still essential. If students have written one or more synthesis essays before they tackle an “evaluation essay,” they have had additional practice with analysis and summary, particularly if instructors have assigned frequent brief summaries of the course readings. However, to move students beyond analysis into evaluation, now we need to stress the element of opinion/judgment that has been less important with the previous, expository, assignments.

One way to do this is to reiterate the definition of evaluation and then contrast several instances of analysis with evaluation. For example, you might ask students to analyze a pizza. What are its elements? When they answer, predictably, dough, tomato sauce, cheese, etc., ask them next what kind of pizza they like most and why? When they begin to express a preference, draw them out a bit on some of the details that make one pizza different from another and more or less desirable to one person or another. From here it is a short step to determining some criteria for judging one pizza next to another. Of course, the instructional point is that students are going beyond analysis when they make a value judgment, and this is the essence of evaluation.

After the class has worked with a few topics that contrast analysis with evaluation (cars, vacation spots, rock groups, movies, restaurants, etc.), you can move them into analyzing and evaluating written texts. As in their introduction to summary, students can more easily practice with short texts before they take on a full-length evaluation assignment. If you teach evaluation along with argumentation (or writing with a persuasive goal), you will, of course, be discussing criteria and their weighting and how appropriate they are for a given audience.

You can ask students to analyze a paragraph or short essay first for certain specific points that you lay out. For example, students can identify elements of argument: appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos; or they can focus on organizational concerns, such as thesis, topic, and summary sentences, unity of ideas, and coherence devices; or they might locate style points, such as specific word choices, sentence variety, and figures of speech. It helps to emphasize that analysis adopts a relatively objective tone, observing, identifying, and explaining, but not judging.

After students have looked at the pieces of an argument, they can take the next step, to evaluate how well the text achieves its purpose. Assuming that the class has been studying persuasive writing and is familiar with the elements of argument, you can establish a limited set of criteria on the board (i.e., defines the issue clearly, takes a defensible position, offers solid support, presents persona effectively, etc.) and begin to evaluate the text in relation to the criteria. How effective is the evidence: is it current, complete, accurate, reasonably unbiased? Does the author explain how the evidence supports his thesis? Has the author anticipated the needs of her audience: are terms sufficiently defined (or over-defined), is there enough background information provided for the reader to understand the issue or assertion being made, is the author making accurate assumptions about the audience’s background (beliefs, prejudices, knowledge level, etc.)? Working with the class with a short text and walking students through analysis and evaluation—in relation to one another—will make it easier for students to take on larger evaluative tasks on their own.

Analyzing, synthesizing, and judging texts are high-order critical thinking skills that most students need much practice with to do well. If you begin your Composition II course with summary and synthesis assignments, students can get that practice before they take on the more complex assignments of critique and rhetorical analysis. Of course, there is no foolproof way around the “summary syndrome,” and some students will happily churn out summaries in place of analyses and evaluations all semester (perhaps into their next lifetime). But defining the processes early on, contrasting them, and working with them in class will limit the summary/analysis/synthesis/evaluation confusion.