A sample guide to writing a literature review
How to write a literature review from start to finish
Putting together a review of the literature for your dissertation? You think it will be easy to just pull out some old books, pour yourself a cup of hot coffee, and write down a summary of what you’ve read while skimming the pages. Well, not exactly.
What is a literature review?
The literature review of a dissertation is the chapter that gives an analysis of the research sources you’ve read and gathered while doing your dissertation research. The information is about and related to the topic you chose to study, and it helps you find the gap in the work that your dissertation will fill.
Students often don’t know what to put in the literature review part of their dissertations. Here’s the answer: In most cases, the literature review is just a simple summary of all the important sources that you should link to your text in a critical way to show your opinion about the source and any arguments against it.
One way to critically engage with the literature review chapter is to ask yourself, “What did you get out of a certain source, and is this different from what you got out of all the other sources you used?”
A literature review gives a new perspective on research that has already been done or combines both new and old ways of looking at a research study. It gives a thorough and analytical outline of how the ideas in a research study changed over time, with a focus on major, often controversial debates. A literature review can also evaluate a source of information for the reader and tell them about the source’s validity, applicability, and relevance to the study area.
The goal of a literature review is for the student to summarize and analyze the arguments found in the readings without adding anything new to the field. It is what your dissertation research is based on.
Why you should do a literature review
Now that you know what a literature review is, you need to know why it is important to include one in your dissertation. The literature review is an important part of your dissertation because it shows examiners and readers that you know a lot about the research that has already been done in your chosen study area.
A literature review helps a student convince the examiners and readers that the information in the dissertation is real, important, and well-supported. So, it’s even more important to put in the work you need to put together the right literature review for your dissertation.
How to write a review of the books?
A literature review is more than just reading and writing. It’s important for the student to read and reread the sources often to find any gaps in the study area.
Here are some steps to help you write your literature review.
Step 1: Make a list of your sources.
To write a good literature review, the first and most important step is to have a good idea of which sources fit the dissertation theme best. If your mentor has given you a list of references, that’s great, but if not, you should find your sources, read them carefully, figure out where they disagree, and then write your literature review.
The sources you choose should be fair and written by scholars and authors you trust. For your literature review, you can use books, academic journals, and other published reports or documents as reliable sources. To choose good sources for your dissertation, you should think about the parameters and goals of your research.
Here are a few questions that can help you choose relevant sources to include in your literature review:
What do you want to find out?
What kinds of theoretical questions or points of view do you want to look at?
What kind of method are you going to use for your research?
Will your literature review focus on only quantitative sources, only qualitative sources, or a mix of both?
Reading the abstract of the paper or study that the source is from is a good way to figure out how useful it is for your dissertation. The abstract will help you decide whether or not the source is useful for your research.
As you look for your sources, make a list of all the relevant ones at the same time. In today’s data-driven world, it’s easy to lose track of what you’re doing. Choose an app to keep track of your sources and a citation tool to save yourself a lot of time at the end.
Step 2: Carefully read your sources.
After you’ve done a good job of finding your sources, it’s time to grab a hot cup of coffee and read through them. It is best to read the text in a few steps to get a clearer picture of how the text from different sources fits together. Look over all the sources quickly to get a sense of what was written and what arguments were made. This will help you figure out which sources you want to highlight in your literature review.
Follow this step by reading the sources again, but this time more carefully so you can get a better understanding of what they say. A student would do well to write down notes as they read the sources and ask questions to figure out how to connect the sources to their dissertation research.
One way to show how you analyzed the sources in your literature review is to say what your academic opinion is about the text in a source, what you think about the method the scholar used, and what you think about the arguments made or the research question or hypothesis stated in the source. These points will help you make a clear line of argument in your dissertation and show that your work is coherent and logical.
Step 3: Look for the holes in past research-
The research gap is a very important part of your dissertation as a whole. Finding a research gap shows that your dissertation is relevant because it shows how your dissertation can fill the gap that was found. Seeing a gap also shows that you’ve done a thorough job of analyzing, which makes a better impression on readers and examiners.
To find a gap, you need to know what it is. A research gap is a question, problem, or point of view that hasn’t been looked at in the research that has already been done in that field.
Finding a research gap is important if you want to show that your dissertation is original, because it shows that you aren’t just repeating what’s already been written. It shows how well you know the status of the literature you’re using in your dissertation and how much work and research you’ll need to put into your own work.
Students often find it hard to figure out where there are gaps in research in their chosen field of study. Here are a few ways to deal with problems while trying to do this hard thing:
Reading: Start by reading well-known articles about the topic you’ve chosen to study. Don’t worry if you have to look through a lot of articles to find the ones that are most helpful.
Read the summary and the suggestions: Reading the abstract is a good way to get a quick idea of what an article is about without having to read all of it. After reading the abstract, quickly read the first and last paragraphs of the chosen articles.
These steps will help you understand what the article or research study was trying to do and what the results were. They will also give you ideas for future research. These new recommendations help you figure out where the research needs to be done.
Step 4: Begin writing your literature review.
You’re ready to start writing your literature review now that you have all the relevant sources and points.
Follow the tips below to make the process of writing easier and smoother:
Check out some sample literature reviews. You should look at the sample literature reviews in your chosen area of study and read them carefully to learn about the current debates and themes. This is a good place to start putting together your own literature review and giving it a structure.
Also, if you don’t know much about academic writing, reviewing samples will help you figure out what you need to do. The bibliographies or reference lists of the chosen texts will also help you find more sources.
Stay on top of it: Keep your subject as small as you can. It shouldn’t be a surprise that there will be a lot of sources about your chosen area of study. Researchers look into a topic in many different ways, and each study is very large. Because of this, the literature on each subject is very large.
You should look at every text that has something to do with your dissertation topic. To make it easy to write the literature review, you need to narrow the scope of your work. It is important to make sure that the focus of your dissertation is shown in your literature review.
Refer to sources that are recent and up-to-date. Make sure that the sources you choose to include in your literature review are the most recent and up-to-date, given the changes in the area of study you have chosen. It is important to find a balance between theory and current approaches because this will show how ideas in the literature have changed over time.
Set up the structure of your literature review for your dissertation: Putting together the structure of your literature review is a process that you do over and over. The structure of a literature review is much more complicated than just writing an introduction, body, and conclusion. There are a lot of sources, so you’ll need to plan out the theme, topic, and argument in a clear way. You can do this correctly if you follow the tips above.
Plan out how your literature review will be put together.
Pay extra attention to how the body of your literature review is put together.
Step 5: Write the main part of your literature review.
Once you’ve decided how you’ll go about writing the body of your literature review, it’s time to start writing the paragraphs that will go in this section. A review must be written in a way that is formal and academic. Sources should be put into groups that make sense based on the arguments or theme. The text should make sense, be short, and not use harsh or personal language. Most of the time, a literature review is written in the third person to highlight important parts of a source for the readers or examiners.
It is recommended that a student always know the writing standards of an institute to make sure he or she uses the right words and phrases. Remember that it’s better to talk about some sources of the literature review in the present tense. BE AWARE of the linking words, because we’ll be using them a lot when we write our literature review.
Step 6: Write the ending –
A powerful conclusion is one that includes a summary of what the sources mean and how they relate to your argument or the main research question of your dissertation.
How to write a review of the literature:
It is a big no-no to just repeat what other authors have said. Analyze things and back up each comment with relevant information.
Structure the body of your literature review with more than one method.
There should be a lot of pieces of evidence to back up what you say about a certain source.
Be very picky about the sources you add to your literature review.
Use direct quotes only when you want to make a point stand out.
Use the right citations to make sure that your literature review and dissertation as a whole are accurate.
Summarize the main points of your review of the literature and explain why they are important.
Use a hard, loud voice to get your point across.
Get rid of any jargon or slang that doesn’t belong.
Make sure you have listed your sources and formatted the review according to your institute’s rules.
When you’re done writing your literature review, make sure to proofread it carefully before giving it to the examiner or the people who will read it.
