Writing a Literature Review

WHAT IS LITERATURE REVIEW?

 A literature review is a text of a scholarly paper, which
includes the current knowledge including substantive
findings, as well as theoretical and methodological
contributions to a particular topic. Literature reviews are
secondary sources, and do not report new or original
experimental work. Most often associated with
academic-oriented literature, such reviews are found in
academic journals, and are not to be confused with
book reviews that may also appear in the same
publication. Literature reviews are a basis for research in
nearly every academic field.
 General Guidelines to
Writing a Literature Review
You will need to pick out the research
most relevant to the topic you are
studying
Don’t attempt to cover everything
written on your topic
You will use the studies in your
literature review as “evidence” that
your research question is an important
one
Organizing Your Literature Review?
 CHRONOLOGICAL: This is a common approach,
especially for topics that have been talked about for a
long time and have changed over their history.
 COMPARISON TO PRESENT HYPOTHESIS: If
your literature review is part of an empirical article or
meta-analysis, where you intend to present a hypothesis
and come to a conclusion, you can organize the
literature review to show the articles that share or
support your hypothesis, and those that disagree with it.
 PROMINENT AUTHORS: If a certain
researcher started a field, and there are
several famous people who developed it
more, a good approach can be grouping the
famous author/researchers and what each is
known to have said about the topic.
 PROCESS FLOW:If your literature review
centers around part of a process, you may
want to describe the stages in that process
and group your citations by different stages
or steps in that process.
Writing the Literature
Review..
Step 1: Review APA
guidelines
Step 2: Decide on a topic
Step 3: Identify the literature
that you will review:
Step 4: Analyze the literature
Step 5: Summarize the
literature in table or concept
map format
Step 6: Writing the review
 Common Errors Made in Lit
Reviews
 Insert Running head using the Insert page
numbers of your word program.
 Varied sentence length helps readers
maintain interest and comprehension.
 Single paragraphs are abrupt. Paragraphs
that are too long are likely to lose the
reader’s attention.
 Do not use emotional words., e.gs, felt.
 When you list something, put comma right
before the last word.