Having a hard time working on your literature review? This might be your lucky day; you’ve come to the right place. Let’s solve your problems once and for all with these excelling tips on how to write literature review for thesis. Get comfortable and note the key elements.
This is an in-depth analysis of various publications and other literature works based on specific topics and over set time frames. It an assessment! Among the areas that are quite outspoken in the literature review are summarization, comparisons, evaluating and classifying data. However, literature reviews are of two different types. One is a single separate paper while the other is a preliminary for thesis and research assignments. For the dissertation type, it’s most times used in research assignments, mainly in the postgraduate docket or maybe part of the thesis, but mostly used to back the proposal for the intended research. On the contrary, the stand-alone literature review is a separate text that is assigned to undergraduates for assessment purposes in skills on evaluation and analyzing information.
Just like most other college writings, literature reviews take the basic format structure. You won’t just be giving summaries of each source one by one like an annotated bibliography list, but instead, you’ll be placing and grouping the information based on the outlined structure.
Literature reviews come in the form of assignments by lecturers in undergraduate level, normally based on the field of study. The overall purpose is to assess the student’s abilities when it comes to demonstrating and putting across details on how they best understood literature publications on various topics. As a student, you ought to prove to your lecturer that you’ve understood the literature and in reviewing it through analysis and synthesis of information. Here is some o the few roles of a literature review;
With the above roles of literature review, at least you can now gauge where your assignment belongs to. Let’s now move forward to look at the guide on how to write literature review for thesis. Stay with us and find out more;
You not only writing, are you? As an essay writer you ought to have a target goal for your paper or else you’ll just be writing for no good reason, leave lone you won’t be in a position to conclude. On how to write literature review for research paper, you’re required to come up with ideas on what you intend to address in your text. What needs be captured and what shouldn’t? What does the assignment require of you? Are you well equipped to tackle the assignment and still achieve the desired effect? The above are good questions you ought to be asking yourself before you go ahead and start drafting your literature review. Don’t be in a rush and go through the instructions carefully to ensure your intended purpose is relevant and would meet the mode of assessment.
With you is a topic and text to be reviewed, what next? How about you now start doing your extensive research to find out what’s going on. You might be having a rough idea considering it’s your area of discipline, but this shouldn’t be enough to sustain a lengthy discussion.
What type of literature are you dealing with? This could assist you in gathering the required and significant sources of information for the research. While at this, strive for perfection. Your sources greatly determine the outcome of the literature review. What’s the content in the text and how best can it sustain a discussion or pose an argument? Some of the recommended source material you could always go for; reports, internet resources- certified sites only, government documents journal articles. Not forgetting to mention the ultimate source which is the library, it not only provides with an unlimited source of information but also comes with an excellent environment you could sit down and work on your research with ease.
Another thing on how to write a literature review for research paper is the number of resources. This is determined by the intentions of the literature review and the level of education, be it post or undergraduate. Usually, the undergraduate degree takes at most six sources while postgraduate it’s as much as you can do so long as at the end of the day you satisfy the instructor. For more details on how to write literature review article sourcing, you could seek clarification from your instructor; they’re there to guide you.
Keep note of the source details; the information details from your sources should be well captured; this is the author’s details, publication dates, page information and so on. This is all to save you referencing time later on.
There are several sources available, for you to come up with a fantastic literature review you ought to thoroughly go through the information in the publications. Look out for the arguments and main discussions highlighted in the text. They can help you derive a strong argument based on the arising strengths and weaknesses.
Have a pen and paper with you as you read. This is to jot down some of the critical details and information that you’ll stumble upon during the process. Major around the major themes and titles and not just noting down anything stay objective.
How to write literature review assignment requires you to come up with a detailed outline of how you ought to arrange the gathered information. A good way to deduce some of the patterns and connections between the data is to create a targeted table and fill in the information.
The sources are present but you as a writer, what are you doing with them. Go ahead and do a careful analysis of the information sourcing, be objective with your approach. The analysis aspect on how to write literature review assignment is a crucial part and you ought to ask you some of these questions;
The above are but a few approaches on how to write literature review article you could always consider whenever you’re analyzing the given literature. You could as well add more based on the topic in question to fit your paper
All academic papers have a basic structure they follow in composing the article. This is all to maintain logic and sensible flow of ideas. You won’t be concluding your paper to start an introduction, would you? It is for that reason that coming up with a standard structure on how to write literature review article would be an excellent idea. The format is the introduction, the body then the conclusion.
This is the starting part of the literature review and it ought to be as intriguing as possible. You ought to capture your reader’s attention to get them hooked into reading your paper. On how to write literature review for dissertation, you should address the following;
The body paragraph is the section that comes immediately after the introduction. How to write literature review for dissertation, the body paragraph holds the most bulk. It contains lots of information that had been hinted in the introduction. There’s the revealing of the pieces of evidence, expounding on the information you gathered from your research, appreciating other writer’s approach and theories you stumbled on. It’s just supporting all the ideas and opinions you settled for after analyzing the literature.
Now here you’ll be required to summarize and synthesize all the headings and subheadings to be reviewed into paragraphs. An idea per paragraph, don’t mix up the content to avoid distorting the information. This is all to have a logical flow of points and make it easier for the reader to follow up on the content based on the patterns and connections. Do a thorough evaluation of every source and how their contribution to the overall paper in terms of themes that is to be covered.
Outline on how to write literature review example body paragraphs should include;
This is the ending part of the literature review. All that you’ve drawn and come up with ought to be summarized in an orderly fashion to sum up the paper. You’ve gone through the literature, you’ve come up with working theories, ideas and arguments, you’ve managed to put them down into writing, and now it’s time to make your final stance on the matter. What’s the take-home message for your readers?
A good approach is to make recommendations based on your research findings. This can help future researchers with targeting and focusing on some of the literature review aspects that are insufficient and need further research. Mention some of the conflicting ideas, shortcomings, strengths, and weaknesses you’ve drawn from your research. What do you think the author failed to do of which if they had done so would give the literature a better outcome as compared to the initial one? Remember, whatever you point out can help the writer in working to improve the areas of weaknesses in the paper. And that’s why you ought to stay objective and avoid being bias at all costs.
The summary on how to write literature review example conclusion contains;
So far you should be ready to write your literature review. If all you’ve been keen with the writing, you ought to have noted some of the critical aspects like information sourcing, the structure, and role of the literature review to assist you in coming up with winning literature reviews. Stick to your study stable and get the job done!
What do you think makes an individual a good literature review writer?