How to meet the purpose of writing a literature review?

Literature review is certainly not the same as writing a book review; a literature review seeks to survey scholarly articles and books, even dissertations, which are relevant to specific issues or research areas and offers critical evaluations of each of these works. So, the main purpose behind writing a literature review is offering an overview of the noteworthy literature which has been published on the concerned topic. Through this review you can show your instructor and reader how extensively you have read on the topic before writing. The review can be included in the introduction of reports and thesis or written as a distinct assignment.

• You need to understand that a literature review must not only describe what other writers may have written in other books; rather it should be presented as a critical debate which highlights differing points of view and divergent approaches. So, the review is to work like an analysis and synthesis of all published work on a certain topic offered by you using your own rationale.

• You have to understand what the basic aims of a literature review are before writing one. The review will basically define and also limit the issue you are writing about, place your work in a historical perspective, evaluate research methods and eliminate unnecessary duplication and finally, relate your own findings to the earlier knowledge, hinting at further research.

• While writing a literature review, you have to follow certain stages such as problem formulation, literature search (where you look for materials for the subject), data evaluation (where you decide which literature contributes substantially to the subject), and analysis and interpretation (where you discuss conclusions and findings from the literature you have gathered).

• As you start off on more advanced courses, you may be instructed to find multiple literary sources on a certain topic and review these. You have to expose their weaknesses to prove that further research on the topic is justified. So, you review published literature to discover facts (learning process) and then prepare a review of this literature that you have read to show and justify your opinion (demonstrate understanding). In other words, you move from narration to transformation to extension of knowledge.

• When a critical review is needed, the review structure must not be identical to an annotated bibliography. You have to organize the materials according to the issue. There should be certain logic in organizing the materials. The amount of details included on a specific issue should be relevant. You are expected to be critical of the methodology issues and you should ideally point out when results are conflicting. Your summary must help the reader to understand the problem and your research should adhere to the methodological connotations of literature reviews.

Summary: The literature review is expected to be critical of what has been published on a certain topic earlier. It must identify the areas of controversy and raise questions. It is also expected to highlight the need for further research and areas where such research can be carried out. The review is judged in relation to your entire research and must be directed at improving the understanding of the problem by the reader. The literature review is like a discursive prose and not a compilation of summaries of many literary sources. The whole review has to be split into sections which represent trends and themes. You will only seek to evaluate and synthesize materials in relation to the thesis question. It is different from annotated bibliography where you have to summarize every item in short.