If you are a scholar, you have heard of literature review, right? Without understanding what it is, you will never write what is required of it! There is need to comprehend what constitutes every part of a study, and so is the literature review section. That is why this article will comprehensively explains what a literature review is, its significance and what it constitutes.
What is Literature Review?
A literature review is the critical analysis of sources that are published on a particular topic. It involves assessing the literature and providing a summary, comparison, classification, and evaluation. Literature reviews are written in science, social science and occasionally in humanities.
Importance of Literature Review
The main merit of your literature study is to identify the gaps in current knowledge. This will show your reader that, you have an in-depth grasp of your subject and that you understand where your research fits. Besides, it provides a solid background for research papers since the comprehensive knowledge of the literature is essential to most research papers.
Steps Involved in Writing a Literature Review
- Survey
A literature review is usually organized around ideas and not the sources themselves. Thus, it is important to survey and be selective in your topic and consider the ideas that connect your sources together.
- Convey it to the reader
Write a simple statement that informs your reader what your organizing principle is.
- Organize
First, survey your area of study and synthesizing it. Then, come up with an effective way of presenting your information. Develop an organization of your preview at both local and global level.
It is thus critical you cover the basic categories. Organize the body; this can be done; chronologically which is in it was conducted. You can also do it thematically, which involves organizing ideas around topics.
Sometimes, you are allowed to organize your work methodologically. Group research the way it was conducted. You can also achieve this by publication, which groups sources by the type of research they present or by trends.
- Compose
After selecting the general organization, begin to write your literature review. Ensure you back up your interpretation of the available sources of evidence to validate your work. Ensure that the point relates to the focus of the literature review.
Finalize with the conclusion which contains the summary of the major contributions of the important articles, evaluation of the current state of the research topic and insight into the relationship between the subject under review and other larger topics.
The article has satisfactorily elaborated to you all that literature study section entails! That is all you need to come up with relevant content on the topic, hence good grades.