Learning to Write a Literature Review
The Main Aim of Literature Reviews
Whether you are writing a thesis, a dissertation, or a research proposal, you will generally be asked to write a literature review as well. Thus, clearly, it is extremely important to familiarize yourself with this essential part of academic writing. The name itself makes things awfully confusing, and often leads students in the wrong direction.
Bear in mind, first, that if you are taking a course in the humanities, the social science, and/or the sciences themselves, then you will most likely be responsible for writing a literature review at one time or another. Most students make the mistake of thinking that, in writing a review, they will actually be reviewing a piece of literature, be it novel, short story, book of poetry, or any number of other works. They think that by giving a critique of the work and discussing why they liked it or disliked it, then they are finished. Unfortunately, this could not be farther from the truth. In fact, try to pull something like this in your dissertation, and the committee reading it might just laugh you out of the room. Needless to say, that is never a good sign.
In truth, the word “literature,” in this case, encompasses any work or collection of works on a topic. It does not necessarily refer to the great works as we know them, such as Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Salinger. It can refer to such works, but only if that is what your dissertation, research proposal, paper, or thesis is actually about; otherwise, it can refer to anything, be it a collection of pamphlets explaining the British government during Africa’s colonial period or scholarly articles defining possible treatments for a torn rotator cuff. Furthermore, the “review” in literature review does not have to mean that you need to give your own personal opinion on what you have read.
At its heart, literature review writing involves discussing published information, within a specific subject. It may pertain to a certain time period, it may be general, it may be universal, but it must be published and it must be relevant to what you are writing. Sometimes, the review can actually be a relatively simple synopsis of the sources you are using. However, organization is important, and it should include some kind of synthesis along with the summary. A synthesis involves reorganizing the information, in such a way that it allows you to interpret old material in a new, inventive way.
Succinctly, a literature review is actually designed to help you in your writing. Specifically, it will help you to support your argument, working in much the same way as the methodology chapter. However, whereas the methodology actually backs up your argument with proof, the review helps you to show how other sources can support your argument.
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Tags: dissertation, literature review, literature review writing, methodology chapter, Research proposal, thesis
