Literature Review Introduction: The Main Principles of Review Writing
An essential aspect of writing a literature review is to be able to deliver an attention-grabbing literature review introduction, which should attract the attention of the audience so that your readers want to read the review till the end and also get a general understanding of what sources you have used. So, it is first of all vital to define what a literature review is.
What Is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a type of academic writing or a separate section in a larger paper that focuses on summarizing, analyzing, and evaluating primary and secondary sources that help in a specific topic development. Moreover, a literature review also aims to provide sufficient supporting information for a specific subject. In some cases, it may also be used for providing recommendations or encouraging a call to action.
How to Come up with the Best Literature Review Topic Ideas?
When you are assigned a task that sounds as “literature review writing,” you should be definitely aware of the precise topic. If you have no topic, you need to decide it for yourself while making it correlate with your scope of research of a subject area. The topic also depends on the literature review structure or a purpose, so make sure you can manage this pre-writing stage.
How to Choose the Best Topic among the Provided Literature Review Topics?
- Think of the area of research you find particularly interesting or familiar. It is advisable to conduct research and write a literature review in the area that you are good at. Moreover, it is essential to have a clearly formed opinion on the topic and be sure that you can provide a comprehensive critique on it.
- Provide a careful analysis of the topic and explore it from various perspectives. Once you have decided on the subject, make sure you find literature that is relevant to it. More so, you need to decide on the stance you take, so be sure you provide either a «for» or «against» position regarding the topic. Your argument should be clear and it should be adequately supported by a literature review.
- Carefully read your paper prompt and get to understand what you are required to write about. Some topics are really easier to write than the others, so make sure you have sufficient time for ample preparation and writing process.
- When you have a free topic, make sure you select the one that is both appealing and familiar to you. It is always easier to write about things that you are knowledgeable about. Make sure you decide on the style of writing and choose the appropriate structure or tone of writing.
- If you do not know where to begin, read some other literature reviews by taking them as samples. Sometimes, some small aspect, concept or idea will start the whole process.
Despite the fact that literature reviews can be just small separate sections in the bigger paper (such as a research paper, a term paper or coursework), you need to be aware that your grade also greatly depends on this section. So, make sure you take a serious and a diligent approach to working on the paper. Be attentive to literature review organization and detailed structure.
Primary and Secondary Sources in Literature Review
It is important that you clearly understand and know the difference between primary and secondary sources that can be used for the review. Apart from this differentiation, it is also important to be aware of which types of sources in general should be chosen for the literature review paper. Particularly, you need to choose legitimate and credible sources that are peer reviewed and that can be used for strong support of your opinions and arguments. As such, primary documents are those that have directly contributed to the field of research or a research area. It can be an artifact or a manuscript or a historical document. As a rule, these sources are really old but still this fact does not undermine their credibility. Such source being old really differs from the source that is simply outdated and not relevant any more. Secondary sources are the ones that have already researched the primary sources and that provide some new information based on the old one, in particular. As such, among the secondary reviews are books, articles, websites, etc. Here keep in mind that they are taken from trustworthy databases and libraries and that they are peer-reviewed.
On the whole, since it can be really hard to provide a successful literature review, there is a need in specific tips. Check them out:
- Choose a topic you can easily write about/ talk about. Since you have background information and knowledge in the topic, you will spend less time on the preparation and reading to understand the background information itself but will be more concentrated on analyzing and reviewing the sources.
- Despite the fact it sounds strange, try to write your conclusive paragraph first. In such way, you will know what outcomes you expect and what you intend to prove whatsoever. It will farther help you develop your arguments and structure your body paragraphs.
- Apply additional visual aids, such as mind maps, visual charts, etc. These instruments will help you organize the ideas and further support them with arguments.
- Make sure you gather information and choose sources for the literature review in advance. This pre-writing process of selecting sources may be rather time-consuming, so be sure you have sufficient time for it.
- Proofread the paper upon completion, namely edit it for mistakes in content and proofread for possible grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes.
- Do not try to write a whole literature review from beginning to end at one time. Make sure you work on it consistently and have enough time to assimilate information.
Get the Best Literature Review Topics Examples from Papers-Writings.net:
- The psychological effects of Stanley Cup.
- Does chocolate have some benefits for health?
- What is the difference between black and green tea. Which of them is more useful?
- Do people really successfully learn from the past mistakes and history in general?
- Classroom vs. Online Education.
- The most important facts about workplaces you need to know before getting employed.
- Overview of artificial intelligence. Its potential outcome on the future.
- How to manage stress in the workplace and in home settings?
- What are the fundamentals of conducting successful performance appraisals?
- What lies behind motivation?
- What is job satisfaction and where does it derive from?
- What is customer satisfaction and how can it be reached?
- What are the principles of advertising? How do advertisements work? Provide an analysis from a psychological perspective.
- Racism and other kinds of discrimination in the modern society.
- What helps to understand ethical dilemmas when it comes to punishment methods?
- The essentials of promoting success during the process of children development.
- What lies behind difficulties that children have in learning languages and new materials?
- What role does a teacher play in promoting knowledge and literacy among children in the class?
- Should parents be involved into the issue of learning and working on home tasks?
- What should be taken into account when wanting to create the best curriculum?
- What is collaborative learning for students?
- The importance of lifelong learning and its benefits.
- Why does the cost for secondary education increase over time?
- Does education in school play the major role in the development of literacy among students?
- Do you agree that educational program should be focused on the more recent and topical issues rather than historical ones?
- What is the reason that students have become more mobile now than some 20-30 years ago?
- Do you believe that inequality persists in the school environment?
- How to facilitate the process of learning English with the help of different instruments and online methods?
- The significance of green movements in the educational system.
- How should students` learning be evaluated?