Jun 18, · A literature review is NOT a list or a summary of what has been written on a particular topic. It analyzes the articles in terms of how they relate to your research question. While reading, look for similarities and differences (compare and contrast) among the articles What is a review of literature? The format of a review of literature may vary from discipline to discipline and from assignment to assignment. A review may be a self-contained unit — an end in itself — or a preface to and rationale for engaging in primary research. A review is a required part of Literature Review Definition. As this is a less common academic writing type, students often ask: “What is a literature review?” According to the definition, a literature review is a body of work that explores various publications within a specific subject area, and sometimes within a set timeframe
How To Write a Literature Review - Sample & Example
As so many doctoral students working on their dissertations have discovered, writing the literature review chapter is a tedious process involving many steps and pitfalls. To help save you time and heartache, this article will show you the most common mistakes encountered when putting together your literature review. These common literature review errors are broken down into three general categories:.
Using emotional phrases — Avoid using emotional phrases in your literature review section. Remember, you are writing a literature review for the purpose of presenting the existing currents of thought on your research topic.
This means you are only relaying what already exists in the research world of your topic. Thus, there should be no subjectivity and, hence, no words of emotion. Giving personal opinions in a literature review — Although this issue should not be an issue, I see it all too often. The literature review is supposed to be an unbiased display of already-existing thought and research around your topic. It is supposed to be objective, never subjective.
Unwittingly plagiarizing — I will not focus on all the aspects of plagiarism that exist in a dissertation or thesis but, for literature reviews in general, there are a few issues you should take important note of:. First, you must be very wary of any unjustified claims you may make. To illustrate this common mistake of doctoral students, define literature review dissertation, refer to the define literature review dissertation example of an unjustified claim:.
In general, rice is known to be a staple food in Taiwan. The Taiwan Council of Agriculture states that there were originally no indigenous species of rice from Taiwan. Rice cultivation and technology was brought into Taiwan before the Qing Era. Shortly after, the Indica rice became the most productive and efficiently-grown rice grain, especially because of the ample construction of water reservoirs near rice fields. During the Japanese colonial period.
This example is full of unjustified claims and bring up several questions like how did the author know all this? And where was the information taken from? Remember, no matter what the claim and information, you must reference define literature review dissertation. No reference for information like the example above means it may be considered as plagiarismso be extra wary. Inserting long URLs in the body of a study — Often times, doctoral students insert long URLs to provide links to mentioned research studies or articles inside their paper.
Do not do this. Instead, cite the source with the last name s of the author s followed by the year of the work. Then, define literature review dissertation, in the references section of your paper, under the particular reference to that citation, you would insert the URL. When defining certain concepts, do not provide too many definitions lest you confuse your audience.
Keep it simple and cite only the most common definitions for any relevant terms and concepts. Bad organization and structure — This is perhaps the most common error since badly organizing a literature review requires doctoral students to rewrite and restructure many parts. To prevent a bad structure from penetrating your literature review, use sub-headings and then organize your literature reviews under each of these sub-headings.
Doing this will help you maintain focus on the details while keeping focus on the big picture and the overall chain of logic inherent in your review. This will help you avoid illogical structure and bad organization. Irrelevant content — It is common that doctoral students get caught up in the details of their literature review especially while reading other studies. As a result, many students tend to mention studies or points that are unrelated to the topic and the research question s at hand.
Therefore, define literature review dissertation, make sure your literature review mentions studies fully relevant and, at the same time, make sure that the relevant points you mention about a study are also relevant to your sub-heading and research question s. Just because a study is important to your topic does not mean that all the details within it are relevant to your task, define literature review dissertation. Not going over the methodology section of a reviewed article — Usually, doctoral students working on their dissertations like to focus only on certain aspects of articles they review such as the abstract, results, and discussion sections.
However, these students fail to realize that reading through the methodology section of any reviewed articles, even a cursory reading, provides immensely valuable information to help them produce a top-notch dissertation.
Do not lose the opportunity to gain valuable insight into honing your research study by learning from the methodology of others. Remember, the define literature review dissertation methodology, the way you conduct your research, is perhaps the most difficult define literature review dissertation of any PhD dissertation.
Learn from others. If you ignore this advice you will waste time because your will surely need to add these details later after your chair or mentor tells you it is required! Writing a narrowly-focused literature review — Too many doctoral students write their literature reviews in terms of general categories instead of writing on focused topics and subtopics sufficiently narrowed down.
This results in a literature review that is too general and not directly related to their research questions, define literature review dissertation. Thus, you should avoid topics or categories that would require an entire book to sufficiently cover. In addition, as previously discussed, you must make sure that the studies you include in your review are framed in terms of their relation to your research question s.
Finally, make good use of subheadings in your literature review and make sure these subheadings and their respective content are relevant to your research question s as well. Relying on direct quotations — Another bad habit commonly found define literature review dissertation doctoral students working on their dissertations involves the insertion of too many direct quotations.
Although it is ok to insert direct quotations in your study, you should not rely on them too much. Doing so will prevent you from using your critical thinking skills and applying them to appropriately analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the studies you include. Using non-scholarly sources — Something I see too often is doctoral students relying too much on professional opinion articles rather than searching for more authoritative or scholarly sources.
They tend to avoid authoritative sources because these sources are usually the most arduous to read. Do not take shortcuts or what seem like shortcuts.
Spend quality time reading authoritative sources, no matter how much effort this requires. Doing so will make your literature review sparkle and compelling to read. It will also give you extremely valuable insight into appropriately conducting the rest of your study, making the long road ahead so much easier. You must remember that your dissertation committee fully anticipates opposing opinions to exist in your literature review and they expect you to discuss them.
Understand that citing dissenting opinions will only strengthen your argument, not weaken it, define literature review dissertation. Although it is not necessary to focus too much on them, it is vital that you mention some dissenting studies and define literature review dissertation why they depart from your own thinking.
Following the aforementioned guidelines to avoid common errors in the literature review will go a long way to help you create an awesome chapter. However, no matter how much you try to do so, define literature review dissertation, you may still find yourself frustrated.
Your dissertation advisor or mentor may be unwilling, define literature review dissertation, or unable, to give you the help you need. If you refer to your colleagues, you may find them unable to explain the process appropriately or, if they can explain it to you, their process may not work for you, since there is no one single strategy to write a literature review.
You can find the dissertation help you need. Just contact a dissertation consultant who can give you the expert help you need, or at least guide you far enough to do it on your own. Remember, your doctoral dissertation is not only a precursor for your PhD, but it is also a key that can open define literature review dissertation doors for you. dissertationgenius gmail. Unwittingly plagiarizing — I will not focus on all the aspects of plagiarism that exist in a dissertation or thesis but, define literature review dissertation literature reviews in general, there are a few issues you should take important note of: Unjustified claims No referenced page numbers for direct quotations First, you must be very wary of any unjustified claims you may make.
To illustrate this common mistake of doctoral students, refer to the following example of an unjustified claim: In general, rice is known to be a staple food in Taiwan. A Final Word — Get Help When You Need It! Schedule a Free Consultation. Enter Email Confirm Email. Dissertation Assistance Dissertation Defense Preparation Dissertation Writing Coaching APA and Academic Editing Literature Review Assistance Concept Paper Assistance Methodology Assistance Qualitative Analysis Quantitative Analysis Statistical Power Analysis Masters Thesis Assistance.
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2.1 What Is A Literature Review In Research Thesis
, time: 6:31The Literature Review | A Complete Step-by-Step Guide
What you included in each would depend upon your objective for writing the literature review: Introduction This part should clearly define the purpose and focus of the review. Dissertation: If you wrote the review as a part of a thesis or dissertation, you must reiterate the research question or central problem. Provide a short summary of the Jul 17, · The Literature Review Process 1. The Literature Review Process Annie Downey 2. Purpose of the Literature Review“A substantive, thorough, sophisticated literature review is a precondition for doing substantive, thorough, sophisticated research.” Jun 18, · A literature review is NOT a list or a summary of what has been written on a particular topic. It analyzes the articles in terms of how they relate to your research question. While reading, look for similarities and differences (compare and contrast) among the articles
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