How To Write Literature Review – Some Points To Remember While Writing One

Literature review is not necessarily just the review of an old classic or the summary of well known and well read novel. A literature review may consist of almost anything that has been published like dissertations, scholarly articles and even government pamphlets dealing with some remote area policies or maybe even some governing issues. A literature review, once the topic is chosen, will necessarily survey the available written articles that are relevant to the issue and will give an overview of published information on that particular topic. So the question that now arises is, how to write literature review.

A legitimate question, since the the topic in bold lines declare to guide, while one is attempting to write one. So first let us see what the basic aim of a literature review is. A literature review aims to summarize and analyze the works of other authors on a particular chosen topic. So it is a sort of critical essay and analytical essay both combined together to form a literature review. It also follows the basic essay formats as is seen in all other essays. While writing a literature review one has to keep in mind the following points:

1.First the topic has to be selected. Then issues relevant to topic are to be found out and examined. Basically the scope and the objective of the topic needs to be analyzed and worked upon. Once the scope and the objectives are understood the writer will have a clear picture of what to write and how much to write.

2.Then the next important thing will be to look for subject matter related to the topic at hand. Various articles and literature works will have to collected and it will involve a lot of research work on the writer’s part to gather related and relevant data.

3.Then the writer has to organize all the data collected and evaluate them according to their importance and contribution level towards the topic. He or she will have to sort through each data and decide which one will help the reader to understand the topic better and do away with the ones that do not help in explaining the topic well. So this will be another demanding and time consuming research work to sort and sieve the gathered data.

4.After the data is finalized then the writer will have to discuss the work taken, each separately, critically analyze them and point out the connections with the reviewed topic and the value it has in connection with that topic or issue.

So a literature review will consist of the a topic to be reviewed, objectives or scope of the reviewed topic and a clear overview of the entire topic. The review will consist of works by other writers and there should be a category which will divide the works according to their for or against views on the topic. Each work will have to be discussed and relevance to the topic to be pointed out, similarly the differences with the topic will also have to be explained. For each work by another author the writer will have to check for evidences for the author’s claims and also the author’s credentials will also have to be checked. The writer will have to keep in mind the author’s views and see whether they are open minded or prejudiced. How well the author can convince or persuade his reader is another aspect which the writer has to take note of.
So a literature review generally consists of an analysis of the works of other authors on that particular topic and a proper placing of each work in consideration to its value towards a better understanding of the topic.
So the question as to how to write literature review should not pose to be a problem if the above mentioned rules are followed and a proper and deep research is conducted into the topic given or chosen.

This post originally appeared on http://essaywritingblog.com/essay-formats/how-to-write-literature-review