What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a general view and literature discussion in a given branch of study. It is a brief summary of what has been examined, argued, and established of a topic, and it is organized thematically or chronologically. A literature review is created in essay format. This kind of work is not a bibliography, as it is collection of related works and discussion of developments and trends rather than concentrating on one point at a time. A literature review is not a synopsis; rather, it estimates current and previous research concerning how relevant or useful it for your own research.

This kind of writing assignment is written to emphasize specific ideas and arguments in an area of study. By stressing these arguments, the author tries to demonstrate what has been examined in the branch, and where the weak points, gaps, or parts needing the following study are. This review should thus also show to the readers why the author’s research is helpful, essential, significant, and valid.

Literature reviews have various kinds of audiences, so regard for whom you are creating your review. For instance, many literature reviews are made as a chapter for a dissertation or thesis, consequently the audience will wish to know in what approach your investigation is original and important. Stressing the gap in knowledge that your research intend to fill is chiefly important in this example for you have to persuade the readers that there is a gap in the branch of study. A review will also try to persuade the audience of the worthiness and significance of the proposed assignment.

Literature Review Preparation

In order to prepare a good literature review you should get to know about its essence? Do you know why students should write a literature review in their academic works? What are the purposes of writing a literature review? How is it possible to improve it?

Some of these issues will be enlighten in this article. Just keep reading.

A literature review is a chapter of a student’s academic paper that aims at analyzing the critical issues that have been done on the topic. In other words literature review preparation helps you get to know more about the previous research projects, analyze its conducting and compare with your own research results.

When you realize what you prepare a literature review for, you have all chances to do this kind of work in a good way!

Of course, you cannot see the very processes of those investigations, that is why all you can do is to read. Literature sources plays very important role for the literature review creation. The more you will manage to find, the better your work will be.

Do not hurry up with writing literature reviews. Find enough time to analyze each source. Make a list of the questions that you will pose after each informative source.

In the process of comparison you should not judgmental. You should analyze, find differences and try to connect the information with your own project.

This piece of work will demonstrate the level of your knowledge in the sphere of analyzing. Do your best! Good luck!

Few Tips on Conducting a Literature Review

A literature review is a kind of work that has one purpose – to evaluate the critical issues that are done on a certain topic. The literature review is an integral part of many academic writings. You should be ready to prepare a good piece of work and meet all necessary requirements.

In order to make the process of writing a literature review easier for you, we have made an attempt and created the list of questions after answering to which you will be able to start writing a literature review.

So, you have several books that serve as good sources for writing this paper. Now, you should decide why these literature sources are important and what concrete functions they perform.

Answer these questions and use the received information in your literature review:

1.    Did the author of the book state the problem in a necessary and clear way?
2.    Is it possible to find more definite explanations of the problems in the other works written by the other authors?
3.    How does the orientation of the author’s research look like? Is it correct to your point of view?
4.    Is there connection between the theory and practice in the works of this author? Does this approach perfectly demonstrate the connection?
5.    In what way does the author present the argument? Is it structured?
6.    Is this book is really connected to the research you are going to conduct? How exactly is this connection noticeable?

Now you have the necessary questions! Give the answers and start writing your literature review!

Some Explanations on the Literature Review

Is there anybody who is looking for some information about literature review? Definitely there is somebody, since you are reading the article about this exact assignment. And we are going to give some basic facts about the essence of literature review and the ways to write it. It is not difficult to guess that they can be found below.

What is literature review? The definition is rather clear and simple. Literature review is a piece of work designed to give a summary of the published materials on a certain subject. This paper can just summarize the sources or it can present a sort of debates concerning these sources. In other words, you have to interpret in your own way the information you have read on a certain topic.

Why literature review is important? The role of the literature review is underestimated by many students, and this is actually a wrong position. This paper can serve you as a guide to your topic. For instance, you do not have enough time on conducting a profound research. In this case you can always find the relevant literature review, which will contain all the necessary explanations on the topic.

How should you do it? In fact, the process of writing a literature review will be quite challenging without the help of your tutor.  Still, everything is up to you. If you want to make this assignment clear for yourself, you should not neglect the tutor’s assistance. These are some questions that you can ask your tutor.

•    What is the approximate amount of sources that should be included into the review?
•    What kinds of the sources you should use: newspapers, magazines, books, web-sites and so on.
•    How should you evaluate the materials: criticizing, summarizing?

The Literature Review that your Professor Expects to Get

A good research project is nearly impossible to make without a proficient literature review. However, it is important to know what your Professor expects from your literature review, what literature review will be considered as excellent.

That is why this article is dedicated to the presentation of the most significant features of a good literature review.

•    A good literature review should give the names of the writers who touched upon your research question. You should not provide the biography of these writers. Neither should you mention about the other works by them that are not closely related to your topic. You have to enumerate the writers the works of whose helped you in investigation;
•    A good literature review should present a complex analysis of the works touching upon your research question. There are books or journals where your research question has already been investigated as well as the works where your research question is mentioned about indirectly. You have to tell what angle your research question is considered from and what grounds made you come up to a certain conclusion;
•    A good literature review includes the quotations of the authors who had an idea about your research question. For example, “Professor Smith in his work “Fundamental Management” says that, “…”;
•    A good literature review is the one that is perfectly structured. Like any other piece of writing a literature review should be logically consecutive. That is what a structure in a literature review is required for.

Now that you know what literature review your Professor expects to get, you are able to make your own excellent literature review.

Tips on Writing a Literature Review

If you are beating your head out writing a good literature review, what you need is a piece if good advice. Your literature review should be done on the basis of background research. It means that you will have to find the works by the writers who have already investigated your topic or a topic that is close to yours and analyze them. While writing your literature review, you will definitely need to know what you should keep to and what you should avoid. That is why the tips given below can help you in making a good literature review:

Divide your literature review into passages. It is better to talk about each writer with a new paragraph. If you write a straight text, your literature review will be hard to read. Every writer needs see clearly what each of the paragraphs presents and what information it tells about;

Insert quotations. While writing your literature review, you will have to prove that the ideas are not contrived by you personally but taken from a certain work by a certain writer. Besides, you will have to inform on the year of the book’s publication and give a number of page where this quotation can be found;

Do not retell information but rather analyze it. A literature review itself implies analyzing the sources. That is why if you simply reproduce information, your literature review will be a complete failure.

Follow the tips given in order to write a successful literature review, and you will certainly make it properly.

Why Literature Review Is Important

You are working on your dissertation or thesis and have to write a literature review. Well, let me guess: it is the most boring and, perhaps, disgusting task for you, and you absolutely do not understand why you should do it if there is no necessity in it. At least, if I were you, I would have similar thoughts in my mind. Let me convince you in necessity of writing a literature review and explain you why it is important.

Every topic on every study has a certain pre-history. Researchers always try to find something new for investigation. Sometimes they just touch upon the problems but do not disclose them in their works. Someone just has to disclose these problems through their investigation. Can you guess who can be this person? It will be you, of course.

As soon as you start working on the topic chosen, you are becoming a part of the whole scientific world. So, now it is your duty to participate in discussion upon the problems found within certain research area. Besides, it is rather interesting to realize that you are becoming a researcher yourself, isn’t it?

So, writing a dissertation or thesis literature review serves for revealing the hidden ideas that already exist in science. You can call it a kind of your mission – to reveal these issues. You may be proud of yourself for becoming a researcher, for becoming a participant of the world discussion of the problems found within a certain area of research. Moreover, you make an attempt to solve this problem by yourself! Good luck with your attempts! Be sure, you WILL do it successfully!

Literature Review: More Information for You

Like any other part of academic paper, a literature review plays very important role and carries out certain functions. If you want to present an accomplished type of work, you should pay attention to each part. So, let us help you a bit.

Instead of giving you a lot of hints on writing a literature review and telling about the importance of this part in your work (as it was done in many articles), I want to stop on the places, where interesting information may be found.

Try to understand that the more sources you have, the easier it will be for you to understand what is needed.

Even if you are sure about the sources you have, it is better to consult - just in order to check if you are correct.

Read the ideas, offered below, may be you like some of them.

At least, you get more ideas for writing a literature review:

To visit such sites as www.unc. edu or www. wesleyan.edu will not take a lot of time. Just put into searching the key words and the necessary information is before your eyes.

Unfortunately, a lot oа sites offer the same information, still this two site turn out to be the references to the libraries of the great institutes, the information of which you may rely on.

Read the ideas for writing and compare – it is quite possible that you get to know more about writing a literature review.

Every student wants to find some unusual way for writing his/her work, may be the secret of writing for you lies in these sites – check it!

How to Get Involved into Your Work on Literature Review

Literature review writing can turn to be rather boring, especially if to take into consideration the fact that all people tend to lose interest towards the job they are doing. Perhaps, loosing the interest is the most disturbing problem of human mind, and we should fight against it. You cannot omit a task when working on your dissertation or thesis project. What you need to do is to call interest towards your literature review writing by force. Of course, it will be rather difficult, but difficulties are spices of our life, aren’t they? So, get ready for the fight against your boredom and go ahead!

·         Repel all thoughts that hamper you in concentrating on your literature review writing. Perhaps, it is the most difficult task. Still, if you handle it, you will win by all means. Just take your thoughts that prevent you from concentrating philosophically. You will not write your literature review if you think of them only;

·         Try to find something interesting in your work on the literature review. There must certainly be something involving, you just need to find it out. Be sure, if you manage to take the previous step, taking this one will not cause you much difficulties;

·         Try to put your soul into the work you are up to. Any job done with love gives birth to more love. It is the same with your literature review writing. Besides, the interest will come by itself in this case.

Keep in mind that every piece of work is interesting, you just need to find out its beauty.

Literature Review

When we are students we have a lot of different assignments. Writing assignments are considered to be the most complicated of them.

In this connection, you want to write a dissertation proposal, a research proposal, to take part into some scientific conference; in this case you will have to write a literature review. So, if you have some doubts as for how to write a literature review, here is a certain scheme for writing it:

First of all, you should read the literary work, which you will use in your paper.

Second, you should pick out the most essential things of each work and state it in your literature review.

Third, you should put down all the information concerning the source, that is the author, the title, the place and the date of publishing, etc.

If you will follow these instructions, you will succeed with writing your literature review and will be a success.

Therefore, you should take this task seriously and pay special attention to it, since with a help of a literature review, you can improve your mark. The teacher will see how much material you have found, and more than that, how much you have learned, they will definitely be impressed with the amount of work, you have done and assess your work with a high grade.

As you may have already understood almost 30% of the whole mark for your paper depend on the quality of literature review. So, you should be very attentive and serious.

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