Chapter+2+Literature+review


 * INTRODUCTION**

What is a Literature review? A literature review is a descriptive and evaluative account of previous research. That is why it is named Literature review and NOT Literature summary.

When writing the review, you should provide clear justification for why you choose the literature/ articles/ materials/ resources. You should demonstrate your understanding of the literature by being able to 1) choose the related and relevant literature to the research questions you have developed 2) summarize the literature 3) identify areas of controversy in the literature 4) formulate questions that need further research based on the literature you find


 * THINGS TO KEEP IN TRACK**

1) Research Objectives, research questions, or hypotheses 2) The origin of the resources (e.g. books, journals, newspapers) 3) The amount of information you need 4) The recent, current information/ research 5) The ability to understand and critically analyze the information


 * KEEP NOTE ON THE FOLLOWING ITEMS WHILE READING THE RESEARCH ARTICLE**

1) Research Objectives, research questions, or hypotheses 2) Methodology used in the study/ research 3) Findings/ results 4) Discussion 5) Recommendations by the authors/ researchers 6) Citations from others that the authors/ researchers used

**WRITING STYLES OF REVIEWING THE LITERATURE**

It is very important that you understand how to do proper referencing when citing. Remember that for the UHL2332 course, you should follow the APA reference guidelines. This will avoid you from being accused of plagiarism.

Browse through this article. See how the authors write the literature review. 1) [|Laufer & Girsai.pdf]

2) This document contains some information on the language use for reviewing others' research (reviewing literature). [|Language use in literature review.doc]

**ORGANIZATION OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW**

The review of the literature related to your research are found in chapter two. So, how do you organize the literature review chapter? Basically there are two ways to organize or structure your literature.

(1) Chronological - You organize/ present the literature based on the changes in the research field across the time.

(2) Thematic- You organize/ present the literature based on the themes of the research area. This is usually favored by most researchers because you will then be able to summarize the key points (any gaps of knowledge, for example) leading to your motivation to conduct your current research.


 * PROCESSES OF LITERATURE REVIEWING **

Summarize - Synthesize [Compare & contrast, Paraphrase= Change sentence structure (passive-active-passive), change vocabularies, use own structure & vocabularies] - Analyze

**SYNTHESIZING INFORMATION**

When you are reviewing a literature, it will be useful if you could first engage in writing Annotated bibliography. Next you may start with synthesizing the information you have gathered. Here is a good example of synthesizing information. Another example on synthesizing multiple sources can be found here.


 * ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LITERATURE REVIEW**




 * EXAMPLE OF A LITERATURE REVIEW**



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