Guidelines for Writing A Literature Review

 

Tablo reader up chevron

Guidelines for Writing A Literature Review

A literature review is an overview of all the sources that may include journals, books, websites, or government reports on any specific topic. Writing a literature review will give a contextual understanding of any argument that you have written in your paper. While many confuse it with an annotated bibliography, a literature review focuses on specific analysis and relation of the online or physical research you have done. Writing a literature review can be stressful since it involves researching relevant work, analyzing and clarifying it. You can choose to pay someone to do this work if you do not seem to have the time or knowledge to write a review. We will now give you an in-detail guide to help you write a great piece of literature review:

1. Define A Topic

 

There are numerous topics and literature that you can write about, but that can take a long time if you were to look at everything available. So, it would be best if you found that well-described topic that will be a great addition to your review. This topic must be interesting to you. If it is attractive to the writer, high chances are you will be able to make an impression on others too. If you are having problems with the very first step, you can always refer to online platforms to write a literature review for you. Developing one central question when planning your thoughts can narrow down your ideas so that you now have a smaller literature pool. You can make a list of keywords, and refer to online sources such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, etc.

 

2. Evaluate Your Sources

 

The second step is to evaluate the topic's importance, its scope, and how credible the source is. When you read the literature of your choice, make sure to focus on:

  • The problem addressed in the paper
  • Key concepts and their definition
  • Theories
  • Results and conclusions
  • Relation of the publication to other literature
  • Contribution to your understanding
  • Strengths and weaknesses of the research

 

3. Keep The Review Focused

 

The first step to begin your literature review is by understanding the connections between your sources. To do this, you can look at:

 

  • Trends and patterns of the concept
  • Themes and questions of the literature
  • Debates and contradictions
  • Missing content
  • Other influential theories

 

Although you need to be focused, you also need to keep your mind open to get the balance for the broader audience. Do not just summarize the literature but instead keep your analysis critical and consistent.

 

4. Outline The Review

 

By now, you should have a very rough idea of organizing your literature review. Based on your paper's extent, you can now outline and frame the strategies that will give you a more unobstructed view. There are many different ways you can approach outlining a review. 

 

One of the ways can be chronological, that is the simplest way to develop a topic. The other can be thematic, based on the repetitive central themes of your paper that can be reviewed in different subsections with their independent focus. You can also do it methodologically to be used when your sources are filled with several research methods comparable to one another. The last option can be theoretical and openly applied to discuss key concepts, theories, and models.

 

5. Get Your Review Down On Your Paper

 

Just like any other academic paper, you should have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

 

  • Introduction: The introduction should have clarity of the purpose of your review. You can reiterate your main idea, research question, or summary.
  • Body: In the body, you can summarize the source, interpret it by understanding the significance of the work, evaluate based on the positives and the negatives, and finally structure your paragraphs accordingly.
  • Conclusion: The conclusion of a review can also be approached in two different ways. You can either suggest the contents that could be missing from the paper, add new ideas and theories, or draw conclusions. You can also discuss the implications of the literature or put forth ideas for future connections.

 

After you are done with the work, make sure to proofread your review so that you are now confident of having all that you wanted to express. 

 

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...
~

You might like Leyza's other books...