Project Research and Planning Week Seven

As I discussed earlier, I am only using secondary sources to write my report. A review of the literature is an essential part of my work. By not having enough information on this topic yet, I have found some explanations on the Internet about what does literature review section actually means. By conducting academic research report, there are different kind of sources that can be effectively used. To fully answer my research question I need to use a diverse range of secondary sources such as academic journals, books, authoritative databases, newspaper and magazine articles.

The purpose of literature review is to show your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The review should describe, summarise, evaluate and clarify the literature. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept, for example by your research objectives. A literature review must be related directly to the thesis or research question that you are developing. It should synthesize results into a summary and identify areas of controversy in the literature. It can also formulate questions that need further research.

A literature review may consist of a simple summary of key sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. The aim of the research is to evaluate and show relationships between the work already done (Is Researcher Y’s theory more convincing than Researcher X’s? Did Researcher X build on the work of Researcher Y?) and between this work and your own.

Goals of the literature review:
• To provide background for your topic using previous research.
• To show that you are familiar with previous, relevant research.
• To show the path of prior research and how a current project is linked to it.
• To integrate and summarize what is known in an area. Pulls together and synthesizes different results.
• To learn from others and stimulate new ideas. Suggests hypotheses for testing.

There are several steps toward writing a strong literature review:
1. Synthesize and evaluate information
2. Identify the main ideas of the literature
3. Identify the main argument of the literature review
4. Organize the main points of the literature review
5. Write literature review

http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

Click to access grad-literature-review.pdf