The Purpose of the Literature Review
The literature review is not a separate piece of the academic writing. It is a part of a bigger assignment, such as essay, term paper, coursework, research paper or dissertation PhD.
Why do students have to include the literature reviews in their academic papers? In this article we will try to explain what the reasons of it are.
First of all, the literature review allows your readers to find out if the problem which you research was well-investigated before, or it was not, as the literature review has to present a brief overview of the previous researches on the relate topics.
Secondly, the review of literature gives the background information about the object of your research (problem, question). It helps your readers become familiar with the topic of your research, so that they would not be confused.
The third reason which conditions the necessity of doing the literature review is that the information contained in the literature review gives the directions for the further researches and the topic development. That means that the researches who will investigate the topic after you will be able to get acquainted with the previous openings if they read your literature review.
Finally, doing the literature review is necessary in order to develop your researching, information seeking, analyzing and evaluating skills, which may appear to be needed in future. You have to be able not only to find the information on the topic, but also to evaluate it and to decide if it is useful, or not. You should also develop a skill of combining the information. And all of these skills will be demonstrated in your literature review.