The Key to the Literature Review
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.