literature-review.info

A literature review is a description of the information on the particular topic (or the information connected with the particular question or problem) contained it the literature. More often the literature review is written as a part of some academic writing, such as essay, or research work, or dissertation, etc.

The literature review is written in order to describe the results of the previous researches on the topic, which you are going to research. It helps your readers to understand the problem and to find out its pre-history. It also helps you to study over the object of your research.

Remember that you have to refer the sources which you have used during the literature review. It is also desirable to use in-text citations and quotes.

If you are asked to write a literature review, that means that you are expected to demonstrate perfect information seeking and critical skills. To be more precise, you should prove that you are able to identify useful information, to make it suit your own ends, to analyze and to evaluate data, to fix the research object’s weak and strong points.

Remember that the literature review has to be closely related with your research topic. You are not allowed to use the information which is not connected with your topic in order for your own purposes.

The literature review has to be concluded by the brief summary, which is reflecting the level of knowledge on the topic. It also has to point the direction for further research.

The literature review doing process presents some difficulties for students. It is considered to be the one of the most complicated parts of the research paper. In order to ease the literature reviewing process for you we created this article, which contains several tips which should turn to be very helpful.

Create a list of key words and phrases

Before you will begin to seek for the background information for your research, you had better fixed the words and the phrases which contain the main idea f your research. It should be some special words or terms which identify your research topic. These words and phrases will help you to find the information on your topic.

Make notes

While doing the background reading, you are encouraged to note the most significant information. Then you will copy it into your literature review. Note that it is very important to be precise while describing previous researches. Besides, you should mention the sources containing this information. This will help you to ease the list of sources completing.

Write an outline

You had better outlined your literature review. It will help you to keep to the line of thoughts. Besides, you will be able to see if you have missed to mention something important.

Do not write your point of view

There is no place for your opinion in the literature review. You just have to describe the previous researches and respectable opinions of scientist. Your point of view should not be mentioned in this part of the research paper.

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.

The literature review is normally a section of some academic assignment (such as research paper or PhD dissertation), which introduces readers to the previous researches on the topic. It also helps to emphasize the significance of the research.

The literature review has to contain some basic components.
The literature review has to begin with the formulation of the problem which you are researching, and pointing the field of science which is covered by your research.

The next part of the literature review has to describe briefly the previous researches on the related topics, and list the most significant of their results.

Then the time of the analysis and of the evaluating of the data which you have found comes. You have to fix the achievements of the previous researches, and to point the direction for the future investigations.

Finally, you should conclude your work and write a brief summary of you literature review.
The literature review is divided into parts, but it does not mean that you have to write each part of your review separately. The division is relative. It was created in order to help you to organize and structure your literature review. There is no division, indeed. Of course, you had better devoted a separate paragraph to each part of your review in order not to confuse your readers, and to put clearer the idea. But there should not be any special division, such as headings for each part of the review. The literature review has to be presented as the integral text.

Every student writing the research paper or the dissertation faces the necessity of doing the literature review. In order to ease your work we created this article which describes the literature reviewing process.

To create an excellent literary review, you should know the stages which you have to go through in order to complete the literature review process. We will list these stages and give you some tips on these stages completing.

The first stage

First of all, you should identify the literature review topic. This topic has to coincide with the topic of your research, or it may be a little wider. However, you may narrow the topic while doing the background reading. In this case the topic of your research will have to become narrower, too.

The second stage

The next thing to do is to create the list of key words and phrases. You have to fix some basic words and phrases, which contain the main idea of your research. It will appear to be very helpful while looking for the information.

The third stage

This is the final stage of the literature reviewing process. You will have to identify the sources containing the necessary information. Note the most important ideas which you may use in your research. Do not forget to mention the source bibliography information, which will be needed for the list of references.

After completing these stages, you will have to describe the most significant openings which were done previously. It would be very good if you mentioned the current situation of the problem. In the end, you will have to conclude your work and to point the direction for the further researches.