literature-review.info

First of all, if you are assigned to write a literature review and this is an indispensable part almost of any academic writing, you should keep in mind the following, that any literature review is a kind of a descriptive prose, but the subject of the description differs.

Thus, you should remember that literature review is a kind of bibliography list, where you state the amount of materials existed concerning your topic. This means that you should convince the reader with the opinion that not very much research has been done as for this very subject at the moment and you are going to make a great contribution to it.

Besides your literature review should have the so-called structure. It looks like a bad sign if every paragraph starts with the name of the author. You should give a short summary of the book or the article or something of this kind, to show that you know the content of it, and can evaluate its significance and relevance.

To do this you should ask some questions, such as, how does the author express his or her thoughts, what results does he or she come to, what is the main subject of the research, etc. all this will help you formulate the relevance of your own research.

It is also worth attention that you may be asked to write a literature review when making a research proposal. Your duty will be then to prove the necessity of your research. Still you cannot avoid the task of the literature review writing. So, pay special attention to this, it is really important for your work.

The most part of students consider literature review writing to be boring. Why? Because you have to spend a lot of time, sitting at the table and reading someone else’s thoughts and ideas. What is more, you have to copy them, and to analyze them. You have to group the ideas which are alike, pointing the names of the ideas’ authors. No, literature review cannot be a method for developing and expressing your personality. It limits you. And therefore it is extremely boring. When you conduct some experiment, for example, it cannot be boring. It is exciting and captivating on the contrary to the literature review.

But you can avoid boredom while writing a literature review. And, what is more, it is really easy to do. You just have to stop thinking about the boring side of reviewing the literature. Imagine that you are investigating something very interesting. You are looking for an answer to a question which can change the world or something like that. Your imagination will help you to make literature review writing captivating and exciting, if you only try. You should stop persuading yourself that it is impossible. As soon as you believe in it, the boredom will disappear, and you will deepen in an exciting world of literature review writing.

Does this idea attract you? You can easily prepare a literature review, and you will not be bored. And all you have to do is to give a way to your imagination. This is really simple and it does not bound you to do something. Just relax and do your work without being bored.

If you want to make your dissertation paper successful, you should think about possible improvement of each its part. You should know on which chapter your tutor and the committee pay attention at first. Of course, it is better to say that your tutor should pay attention to all components of your work, but still, it happens that he\she has no time to check each word, so you should take this fact into your consideration.

Such dissertation chapter as the dissertation literature review is very important as for your tutor and the committee, either for you. Any literature review demonstrates your skills in different spheres:

• How you can find interesting material for your project;
• How you may connect the works of different authors with your own project;
• How you are able to present your ideas in a right order with a few number of mistakes;
• How you can underline the importance of your topic and prove it with the help of interesting literature sources.

In your dissertation literature review it is better to be clear and do not use too complicated terms. Your assignment is to be understandable and informative – find more catching way for demonstrating your abilities.

It is also very important to show your readers that you are aware about different modern investigations, which are connected to your topic. You are ready not only gathering the material, but also study it thoroughly.

Do not forget that it is important to separate your literature review from the rest of your work and take into consideration that your literature review should be perfectly structured. These are the main issues for any literature review.

The literature reviews may be the parts of the different academic papers. We distinguish the coursework literature review, and the research paper review of literature, and the dissertation literature review. We are not likely to make mistake if we will tell you that this is not the complete list of the papers which include the literature review.

The specific of the literature review of each academic paper consists in the number of analyzed sources. The way and the manner of presentation of the facts never differ. However, the number of sources influences directly the size of the review. For the coursework, it is enough to look through just four of five sources. Hence, the review of literature will take no more than two printed pages. As for the research paper, it is needed to analyze at least ten or fifteen sources, and you are likely to devote not less than five printed pages to such a review. Finally, writing a dissertation, you will deal with a greater number of additional materials, and your literature review will grow.

You see, this difference is also specific. This is what you should discus with your supervisor before setting to work. Whatever sort of the academic paper you prepare, you should put the number of the sources to review clearer from the narrow beginning. You cannot decide this question on your own. And even if it seems to you that you know exactly how many sources presupposes one or another type of papers, you had better put it clearer with the supervisor in order to avoid misunderstanding.