How To Write Literature Reviews
Literature reviews are quite common in many aspects of scholarly advancement and every now and then you might be required to write a literature review. Basically, a literature review is a survey of scholarly resources that aims at analyzing and reporting on key findings, concepts, and developments that are related to the question at hand. In layman’s language, it entails taking various published projects on a related title and analyzing it to find the findings of the researcher in relation to a certain topic. This is all aimed at getting the current knowledge that is established in relation to your hypothesis or thesis. However, you need to nail it at writing literature reviews and I will help you do just that, walk with me.
However before in jump into the Nitti gritiies of all you need to know to write the perfect literature review, you need to know that there are different types of literature review which are all differentiated by their approach, analysis and approach used. I will not go into details about them but these are just a couple of types that you should know about.
- Systematic review – used in the medical field where a combination of methodology and data is required.
- Quantitative review-it identifies new themes and concepts
- Narrative review
- Scoping review– sets the ground for the research
- Conceptual review– groups articles according to themes, concepts or categories
Select the Literature
This might come as quite obvious, but believe me or not this is the first step to a quality literature review. You need to first collect and identify which literature you want to put under review. This will involve more than just selecting as it will need you to take into consideration factors such as the author’s point of view and the contributions that piece of literature has made. The credibility of the literature is also of high importance and it may require you to select multiple pieces for comparison. The basic line of selecting literature to put under review is understanding what your research is after and from there it narrows down to what you need.
Always remember than unlike dissertation papers, you will not need to come up with new data as you will only use provided data and draw an evaluation from there. There are multiple sources from which you can get material for review and it is advisable to reach out to professional writers at times to narrow on your choices. While choosing the literature you might not necessarily have to read through it all from cover to cover but you will need to understand what stands out in that piece, from the dominant theories and repeat citations.
Join the Dots
What do I mean by joining the dots? By now you already have the material that you shall be using, you need to find the link between them by looking out for themes, trends, theories and even phrases that seem to come up every now and then. You can take not of these aspects for evaluation, also, do not forget to identify the methodology and approach that was taken as it may be of immense importance in your review, after all some answers may vary due to resources that were available and approach is taken, but under different circumstances things could have been different.
Take note of gaps in the literature as well that are in the specific works of literature. There are a couple of questions that should guide you through this as well.
- What factors surrounded this research?
- What was the aim of this piece?
- What weaknesses are there?
- What similarities are there? (in case of comparison)
- What methodology was used?
- What contribution does it have to the given field?
With these questions to guide you can now start off on the actual writing of the review.
Research and Draft
Research plays a major role in a review as it provides all the material that you will require in the analysis. You, therefore, have to be careful and quite choosy with the information you bring on board to avoid factual inaccuracies in your work, this could bring it all down the drain. After getting all the material you need then you need to map your review on a draft. Mapping your review gives you space to decide on the best approach to take, how the information joins up and most importantly what tone to use in your review.
Plan your Structure
Structure in writing is as important as the content that you have developed. However, the success of your review could actually be tied to the structure. So then, enough of the problem, what is the solution to getting the right formatting? Good question.
While writing a literature review, you have to walk the reader through your journey all the way from the start to the end.
Define the Hypothesis
The hypothesis in a question review is basically the question you have in mind that is leading you to the research. The hypothesis will set the path for you and give you the guidelines to what you will be looking for so as to support your theory. The reason as to why you need a hypothesis is because you may need to prove or dispute your findings by the end of the review. The hypothesis should be in the first paragraph of your review as you start. This will help establish grounds or purpose and focus of your literature review.
Chronology
Help walk your reader through years of research in a couple of minutes, enlighten them. In this, you need to trace the topic under review and chronologically, depending on the material under review, to its latest form. You will realize that some of the things that you will mention will be the time frames, the methodology used and the circumstances that surrounded the research. With these, you will be able to explain how and why certain developments occurred.
Methodology
While placing methodology under the scope, you also need to consider the approach that was used. When taking a cultural approach, you will tend to have a different methodology in play as opposed to when you are using sociological, statistical or religious approach.
However, remember that you can always get some help from professional literature review writers who have access to a vast database and are conversant with the formatting and structure needed for your literature review. The good thing with sourcing for writers is that they have an open mind and are more flexible in taking different points of view. Imagine seeing the same context through the eyes of a doctor, engineer and an accountant, that would definitely add some uniqueness to your paper
Body
The body in your review should include all the aspects that you have drafted out in your research. It should, however, be kept on to the point and if not necessary some information should be left out. It is always advisable that you subdivide your body using title sand subtitles as it will help define the progression of your review and keep you on track. Given that this is a review, do not keep on paraphrasing the original text without expounding on it, otherwise, it will not be a review but rather a collection of facts and theories.
While using a variety of texts, make sure that you draw the comparison and contrast between the two on every level. In this, you will be able to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of both of them. At the end of each of them, you can give your input depending on the evaluation. This helps give your point of view.
Formatting
The recognized formatting for a literature review is the APA format. The APA format has the provision for all the aspect above. It makes sure that you do not miss the introduction, body and most importantly the referencing. On top of that, it makes your work much easier by defining the structure of your review as well.
Always give credit where it is due and in the light of this, you need to state your references. This allows for further research or a continuation of your review. Stating your sources during research brings credibility and uniqueness in your review.
Conclusion
The conclusion of your review is as important as the body, truth be told, most people tend to have a weak literature review due to a fault in the conclusion. While making the conclusion, make sure that you circle back to the original hypothesis you had in the introduction. Make a strong conclusion to complement the intro and the body.
Writing a literature review is not as hard as thought at the beginning of this segment and we can now both agree that it is just a matter of knowing how and you are good to go. With all these in mind, you are now able to formulate an award-winning award review that is deficient of nothing.