Literature reviews are known as the overview and summary of a particular study that has been successfully made for a scholar’s work. It is an evaluation and searches for a topic that needs the proper citation and copyrights. It’s thesis season again, and in this year of 2021, you should be updated on how to do a literature review.
Here is a detailed guide on how you should be able to do it:
1. Ensure that Your Topic is Narrowed and Specified
Doing literature reviews are easy as one two three if the topic is easy to find. Thus, it is always recommended for students, scholars, and researchers to narrow the topic. Furthermore, it also needs to be specified so that you can find the proper literature and studies to review.
To narrow and specify your topic, all you have to do is consider the interest of your co-researchers if they conducted the same study as you, as shown in this example on omnipapers.com. So, first, brainstorm with your teammates or with professionals so that you may have a hint of the best choice. Then, with that, start limiting your topic and focus mainly on the applicable study.
2. Go and Seek for Literature to Review
Define the source of criteria and selection that you need in doing a review. For example, a good research study has literature reviews from articles published in a specific geographic region, with a specified date and application of methodology. Keep in mind that you can also use keywords that are best related to your topic in order to filter the articles.
After that, the list of references of articles and recent reviews will be shown in from and you may easily find the papers you need. In choosing the literature, you may include those contexts that contradict your point of view.
3. Scan and Analyze the Texts Carefully and Evaluate them
Make a careful analysis of the chosen studies. It is a fundamental step for every researcher because it will affect your review and the other parts of research as well, like the methodology, objectives, and findings. So if you are wondering what the things you need to consider in scanning the literary texts are. Here are some special requirements:
- It should contain an assumption that you think most researchers will make.
- It should have a testing procedure, methodology, tested material, and subjects to reflect your study.
- It should be done by experts in the field of your topic.
- It should have conflicting theories, methodologies, and results.
- It should be constant and unchanged over time.
4. Develop and Create a Purpose Statement in Your Thesis
By reading your chosen articles, you should be able to develop and Create a Purpose Statement along the way. Then, you may write a brief paragraph that summarizes the insights and conclusions you’ve made in conducting the study. You don’t have to be panicky in doing this part. You can simply let your thoughts flow and see the magic for yourself.
5. Start Writing Your Paper
Now, if you feel like breaking down and out of ideas, here are steps in how you can quickly start writing your paper:
Individual theories of scholars should not be used to organize your sections; instead, topics or subpoints should be used.
If each article starts with the name of a writer, you may have just recounted what research is done rather than analyzing and comparing the published study from an interpretive standpoint.
6. Analyze rather than describe
Consider the following two sections. If one person summarizes the literature, the other compares and contrasts the literary works more critically and constructively. Linguistic indicators suggesting conceptual linkages and phrases also help to communicate this evaluation approach.
7. Proofread Your Work Multiple Times
This may seem like a lot of effort, but if you want to have a high success rate in your thesis and prevent revision, you should proofread your paper multiple times. First, consider yourself as a reader: If you are someone else who reads the article, will you see it as logical, clear, and well thought from beginning to end? If not, find the flaws and manually proceed to revision.
You don’t have to wait for your professor to tell you the flaws all over again. Aside from the waste of effort, you will also be wasting more time. So, if you want to proofread your paper well, you may create outlines of the format or read your essay orally. After that, you will have a clearer.