How to Write a Good Literature Review?

The literature review is the backbone of your dissertation and thesis. A well written literature review lays the foundation of the research. It showcases your extensive research, your in-depth understanding and your ability to identify strengths and weakness of the theories and compare them.

Here are a few tips on how you can write a good literature review.

Search multiple sources

Literature review includes primary data-collected from interviews undertaken during the research and secondary data – collected from books and reviews. When you undertake a research for literature review you should include more than one source. Check with your university library for relevant books, journal, reports and newspaper. Do not forget to do a research online for ebooks and other database which may contain relevant information.

Analyze existing literature

After you have collected the information, thoroughly read and understand the concepts to critically assess them. Identify strengths and weakness theories and analyze them in light of your research objective. You must give a strong argument which will highlight the existing studies in a new perspective.

Make a rough draft

Make note of all the relevant theories and concepts that you would like to discuss in your literature review. Draft the literature review with your arguments, making sure that your facts follow logically. You can present the data chronologically, if you are highlighting the emergence of a problem or topic, or start with theoretical literature and move to methodological literature. The aim here is to evolve the reader’s interest in the subject.

Revise and make the final literature review.

After your rough draft is ready, read the draft with a fresh mind, so that you can find out your typo and grammatical mistakes. Proofread all the facts and concepts you have explain and keep a note of all the sources from where you have collected the data.