Writing a Literature Review
What is it?
A literature review is basically a report-style essay with lots of in-text references (Carmyn, 2018) to show where you got all the information from. For the purposes of this task, your literature review should be 1000-1200 words long (about 4 pages, you can go over it) without repeating your self, which means you need at least 4-5 outstanding secondary sources. Better projects will have many sources, all correctly referenced (we'll do this later in class) and an excellent bibliography in ALA.
The best sources:
Why do we need to do it?
The purpose of a literature review is to gain an overview of how the topic has been studied and what sorts of results you might expect in your own research. When you have done your primary research you'll compare your results to the results in the literature review and either
(i) show that they are similar
(ii) show that they are different and suggest some factors that might have contributed to this difference.
When do we have to do it?
The literature review comes up 3 times in this assessment task:
1. You need a beginning lit review for your project plan - at least 2 sources in detail and a bibliography of other sources you'll be using.
2. You need to submit the whole literature review before you get going with your primary research (because it will give you the background to ask good questions)
3. You need to RESUBMIT it in your product (you don't need to rewrite it, but you might have added things to it since you first handed it in, especially if your primary research was different to the secondary research and you needed to find out something new for your analysis)
A literature review is basically a report-style essay with lots of in-text references (Carmyn, 2018) to show where you got all the information from. For the purposes of this task, your literature review should be 1000-1200 words long (about 4 pages, you can go over it) without repeating your self, which means you need at least 4-5 outstanding secondary sources. Better projects will have many sources, all correctly referenced (we'll do this later in class) and an excellent bibliography in ALA.
The best sources:
- are Australian
- are reliable (trustworthy)
- are current (from the last couple of years)
- have statistics you can compare to your own questionnaire results.
Why do we need to do it?
The purpose of a literature review is to gain an overview of how the topic has been studied and what sorts of results you might expect in your own research. When you have done your primary research you'll compare your results to the results in the literature review and either
(i) show that they are similar
(ii) show that they are different and suggest some factors that might have contributed to this difference.
When do we have to do it?
The literature review comes up 3 times in this assessment task:
1. You need a beginning lit review for your project plan - at least 2 sources in detail and a bibliography of other sources you'll be using.
2. You need to submit the whole literature review before you get going with your primary research (because it will give you the background to ask good questions)
3. You need to RESUBMIT it in your product (you don't need to rewrite it, but you might have added things to it since you first handed it in, especially if your primary research was different to the secondary research and you needed to find out something new for your analysis)
Sample Review
This is an annotated sample of a band 6 literature review
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Here's a planning sheet based on the Band 6 review
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How do I plan it?
This plan is for Victoria's Literature review (above)
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Use the IRP umbrella above to plan your own project:
When you're finished
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What's the structure
Introduction:
Body
Conclusion:
Bibliography
Bibme is a great place to keep your bibliography up to date. Do it as you go 'cause you'll need to know exactly where you got each bit of information from to reference it correctly.
Other sites about Literature Review structure
Reading Addicts [http://forreadingaddicts.co.uk/guest-blogs/easy-write-literature-review-heres/24360]
Other stuff about methodology (useful for exam study)
Methodology summary notes .
Definitions flashcards.
- Introduces the topic
- Introduces and defines the keywords (references for definitions)
- States the significance of the research
- Uses evidence (esp. statistics) to prove the significance
Body
- Five subheadings related to your topic (keep a mind map going of all the points as you read)
- Each subheading will be 1-3 paragraphs (about 1/2 page)
- Some subheadings might have sub-subheadings!
- Every point must be referenced with IN-TEXT referencing; quotes need page numbers.
Conclusion:
- Mentions all the subheadings and says how they fit together
- Makes generalisations about the topic that brings the subheadings together
- May note areas for which research is lacking
- Identifies where your research fits in (what gap does it fill?)
Bibliography
Bibme is a great place to keep your bibliography up to date. Do it as you go 'cause you'll need to know exactly where you got each bit of information from to reference it correctly.
Other sites about Literature Review structure
Reading Addicts [http://forreadingaddicts.co.uk/guest-blogs/easy-write-literature-review-heres/24360]
Other stuff about methodology (useful for exam study)
Methodology summary notes .
Definitions flashcards.