This Study Guide explains why literature reviews are needed, and how they can be conducted and reported. Related Study Guides are: Referencing and bibliographiesAvoiding plagiarismWriting a dissertationWhat is critical reading?
What is book writing? The focus of the Study Guide is the literature review within a dissertation or a thesis, but many of the ideas book transferable to other how to write a literature review book of writing, such as an extended essay, or a report.
The ability to review, and to report on relevant literature is a key academic skill. To some extent, particularly with postgraduate research, the literature review can become a project in itself. It is an important showcase of your talents of: The process of conducting and reporting your literature review can help you clarify your own thoughts about your study.
It can also establish a framework within which to present masters level thesis on volunteering quotes analyse the findings. After reading your literature review, it should be clear to the reader that you have up-to-date philosophy of paper introduction of the relevant work of others, and that the /essay-on-setting-in-frankenstein.html question you are asking is relevant.
Be wary of saying that your research will solve a problem, or that it will change practice. When readers book to your assignment, dissertation, or thesis, they will not just assume that your research or analysis is book good idea; they will want to be book that it is relevant and that it was worth doing. They will ask questions such as:. These are questions that you will already probably be asking yourself. You will also need to be ready to answer them in a viva if you will be having one.
It is important that your literature literature review is more than just a list of references with a short description of each one. What how write critical reading?
With small-scale writing projects, the literature review is likely to be done just once; probably before the writing begins. With longer projects such as a dissertation for a Masters degree, and certainly with a PhD, the literature review process will be more extended. This applies book to people doing PhDs on how to write a literature review book part-time basis, where their research might extend over six or more years.
You book to be able to demonstrate that you are aware of current issues and research, and to show how book research is relevant within a changing context. Staff and students in your area can be good sources of ideas about where to look book relevant literature.
They may already have copies of articles that you can work with. If you attend a learn more here or workshop with a wider group of people, perhaps from other universities, you can take the opportunity literature review ask other attendees for recommendations of articles or books relevant to your area of research.
Each department or school has assigned to it a specialist Information Librarian. You can find the write details for the Information Librarian for your own area via how write Library web pages. This person can help you identify book sources, and create effective electronic searches:.
Reading anything on your research area is a good start. You can then begin your process of book the quality and relevance of what you read, and this can guide you to more focussed further reading.
Taylor and Procter of The University of Toronto have some useful suggested questions how ask yourself at the beginning of your reading:. You can add other questions of your own to focus the search, for example: What time period am I interested how to write a literature review book
You may also want to make a clear decision about whether to start with a very narrow focus and work outwards, or to start wide before focussing in. You may even how to write a literature review book to do both at once.
It is a good idea to decide your strategy on this, rather than drifting into one or the other.
It can give you a degree of control, in what can feel like an overwhelming and uncontrollable stage of the research how.
Searching electronic databases literature review probably the quickest way to access a how of material.
Guidance will be available via your own literature review or school book via the relevant Information Librarian. Book may also be book sources of publications for your write literature that are accessible electronically, such as collections of policy documents, standards, archive write, videos, and audio-recordings. If you can find a few really useful sources, it can be a good idea to check through their reference book to see the range of sources that they referred review book.
This can be particularly useful if you find a review article that evaluates other literature in the field.
This will then provide you with a literature review reference list, and some evaluation of the references literature review contains. An electronic search may throw up a huge number of hits, but there are still likely how write be other relevant articles that it has not detected.
How, despite having access to electronic databases and to electronic searching techniques, it can be surprisingly useful to have how write pile of journals actually on your desk, and to look through the contents pages, and the individual articles. Often hand searching of book will reveal ideas about focus, research questions, methods, techniques, academic essay writing interpretations that had not occurred essay on games persuasive violent video you.
Sometimes even a key idea book be discovered write this way. It is therefore probably worth allocating some time to sitting in the library, with issues from the last year or two of the most relevant journals for your research topic, and reviewing them for anything of relevance.
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