there are several steps toward writting a strong litelature review:
1. Synthesize and evaluate information
2. Identify the main ideas of the litelature
3. Identify the main argument of the litelature review
4. Organize the main points of the litelature review
5. write litelature review
1. Synthesize and evaluate information
a litelature review requires critical thinking, reading, and writting. You will take the information that you have gathered through your research and synthesize and evaluate it by indicating important ideas and trends in the litelature and explaining their significance.
Strategies for reading
- as soon you begin reading, take note of the themes or categories that you see emerging. these may be used later to develop a structure for the litelature review.
- take note how other writers classify their data, the litelature in their fields, etc. it can be helpful to read litelature review in your dicipline to see how they are structured.
Categories for analysis and comparison
a strong litelature review examines each work on its own and in relation to other works by identifying and then analyzing them with regards to a number of diffrent research aspects and ideas. here are some possible categories to use for comparison and analysis.
1. topic
2. argument
3. result found and conclusions
4. methods
5. theoritical approach
6. key word
overall a litelature review seeks to answer the following question:
1. What does the litelature tell you?
2. what does the litelature not tel you?
3. why is this important?
2. Identify the main ideas of the literature
once you have begun shynthesize your reseach, you will begin to identify some main ideas and trends that pervade the topics or that pertain to your research question.
use these main idea to slasify the information and sources that you have read. Later, these ideas can be used as the main topics of discussion in the litelature review, and if you have already organized your litelature review, and if you have already organized your litelature on this topics, it will be easy to summarize the literature , find examples etc.
3. Identify the main argument
just like any academic paper., the literature review should have a main idea about the literature that you would like the readers to understand. this argument is closly related to your research question in that it present a situation in the body of literature which motivates your research question.
example:
Argument from literature review: " Although some historians make a coleration between ukranian catholic little has been said of the role of roman catolic curch in the development of ukranian communities in canada. "
Research question: "How was roman catholic church shaped ukranian- canada identity?"
4. Organize the main points of the literature review
after identitying the main ideas that need to be presented in the literature review, you will organize them in such a way as to support the main argument. A well organized literature review present the relevant aspects of the topic in a coherent order that leads redearsto understand the context and significance of your research question and projects.
as you organize the ideas for writting, keep track of the supporting ideas, examples and sources that you will be using for each point.
5. Write the literature review
once the main ideas of the literature review are in order, writting can flow much more smoothly. the following tips provides some stategic to make your literature review even stronger.
