Archive for April, 2008

Literature Review

What is a literature review? What for do you need to write it? How can you benefit from it? Looking for the answers? Read this article and clarify all the arguable points to you.

To begin with, a literature review is a brief description of the sources, used for writing some kind of an academic paper, introducing the most essential points of each investigation.

Thus, you will have to write a literature review in the following cases:

  • First of all, a literature review is needed for writing any kind of proposals. Whether it is a dissertation or research proposal, you will definitely be asked to present a literature review.
  • Second, if you are going to take part in some scientific conference, you will not avoid this task, writing a literature review, as well, since it will show how much material you have mastered for making your research;
  • Third, a literature review is an indispensable part of a dissertation or thesis writing, or any other kind of undergraduate paper, which you will have to write at any rate.

As far as you have understood, literature review writing is a very important task. You should take it very seriously if you do not want to fail, because you have not made this earlier. One more point to mention, is that you should not forget about your supervisor, who becomes your best friend on the period of writing any paper. That is why you should clarify all the point with him or her and this will help you avoid making some mistakes.

Literature Review: Writing Tips

A literature review is a piece of work, where the writer presents the ideas, which are grounded on the information, which has been published on a particular subject.

Very often a literature review is a kind of summary, which is created in order to list the sources. Sometimes the writer prefers to add a bit of synthesis in his\her work. Such addition gives a chance to the reader to create the opinion on the subject.

Here are several tips, which can help you with writing a really good literature review:

1.Be organized in your thoughts presentation;

2.Think about logical connection between each chapter in your work;

3.Make notes from different sources, you use, as it can help you present more precise info about the subject;

4.Choose one area for your discussion, but try to find out the spheres, which help you disclose the topic from different sides;

5.Try to present several different ideas about the topic – do not make your writing monotone;

6.Make sure that you have presented the issues correctly – your readers should see what you want to talk about at the very beginning;

7.Decide on your personal attitude to the problem – you should have your personal point of view in order to prove it and be ready to disapprove the others;

8.Clear up whether you have enough proofs for your work – you should know that you can rely on something.

As you can see for any academic writing the main point is always the structure – so, keep it and you can easily achieve the desirable success.

Papers without literature review

How do you think, will your grade be lower if you do not write a literature review? It is not a fact. Can you guess why? Because a literature review is not always required.

A literature review can be a necessary part of some papers. Let us recall what papers do include a literature review. They are:

- research paper;
- dissertation paper;
- thesis paper.

These papers cannot be prepared without a literature review, since it is a necessary part of each of these papers. No excuse will allow you to pass one of these paper without a literature review section. If you try to do it, you will either get the lowest grade, or be disqualified at all.

And now we will recall the paper which do not include such a part as a literature review. They are:

  • essay papers;
  • term paper;
  • courseworks.

These academic papers do not include a literature review section. What is more, if you only try to compose a literature review for one of these papers, you will be punished, as well. You will either be forced to write another paper, or just get an extremely low grade.

So, as you see, it is really necessary to remember which papers cannot be performed without a literature review sections, and which papers are required not to include this section. This is really important, since you can get into troubles because of adding or forgetting to add this section to your academic paper.

What do You Know about Literature Review

Now we will check what you know about the literature review. So, guess if the following statement is correct.

Literature review means you take a book and read it. After you have read it, you think of the advantages and disadvantages of the book or just share them with somebody. And that is it. I have done the literature review.

If you think that the literature review is something that is described above, you have no idea of it. Literature review is much more complicated and we are going to tell you the truth about it.

Actually it is a process of colleting information. If to be short, you choose a topic and start looking for all the possible materials on it. Do not think that you will have to look for some outstanding books or something like that. You can find some simple articles, pamphlets and so on.

If you have to make a literature review, you will have to discuss the materials you have found on a certain topic. It is going to be a kind of summary of the sources. Here you should remember one thing. The reader actually will not be interested in your point of view. The audience does not want to know whether you have a negative or positive attitude towards something. Your aim is simply make a … review.

Automatically one question may arise in your head. What is the difference between the literature review and the research papers that are made at the colleges/universities? We can show you this difference.

  1. First and foremost, literature review can be a part of the research paper itself.
  2. Research paper presupposes the presentation of your own thoughts and ideas. In the literature review you are analyzing the thoughts and ideas of other people.
  3. Research paper is more about the argument. It also makes a review of the sources but this list is quite limited. Literature review should not necessarily contain the argument but it is essential to discuss a considerable number of sources.

Now, you have the general idea of the literature review and if necessary you will be able to make one.

If you do not compose a literature review

Writing a literature review cannot be called a pleasant task. The most part of the students do not like it. It is very difficult, and very boring. You need to read a lot, to make notes, to read them once more, to copy others’ ideas, to analyze them, and so on. It is very boring work. And it takes a lot of time. Students writing literature review get tired very fast.

Can you pass your paper to the teacher without any review? Is it possible for you to compose a paper without any theoretical part at all?

Of course, you can do it. But the result will not be pleasant. Your teacher may become very angry with you. And you will not like it, also. You will be seriously punished, because it is not acceptable to break the rules which are strictly stated.

Whether you like it or not, you have to write a literature review if it is a necessary part of your article. What is more, your teacher will watch you not to pass a paper without it. So, you have no chances to avoid writing as literature review. Therefore, you need to focus, get a grip on yourself, and prepare a literature review, even if it seems to be awful to you.

If you cannot force yourself to do it, we recommend you to turn to a custom writing service. You had better buy a whole paper, of course, because it would be more coordinated. However, you can order just a literature review, and then, coordinate it with your paper.