Check the Study Skills calendar of workshops.
They cover dissertation writing, literature reviews, and referencing.
These guides will help you write in an academic style.
A literature review should be structured like any other essay: it should have an introduction, a middle or main body, and a conclusion.
Introduction should:
• Define the topic and provide a brief informative background
• Discuss the kind of attention it has received - is it under researched/ has it been the subject of much debate/has the focus shifted over time?
• State the reasons for reviewing the literature.
• Explain the organisation (sequence) of the review.
• Give an indication of the scope of the review/the criteria you used to select the sources (if necessary).
Main body should:
• Proceed from the general, wider view of the research under review to the specific problem or area of investigation/discussion.
• Be organised in accordance to the themes that you have identified during the research stage.
• Address the themes systematically by considering what different writers have said about them, evaluating when appropriate
Conclusion should:
• Summarise the most significant contributions of the literature.
• Point out major flaws, or gaps in research.
• Outline issues that your study intends to pursue.
Organising the literature
Once you have the basic structure in place, you can now consider how to present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Remember the literature review is not a list describing or summarizing the literature you have found.
There are many different ways to organise the sources into your review. Here are some methods.
A literature review is not a list describing or summarising one piece of literature after another. It is a process that includes, discovering, reading, analysing, interpreting and organising the literature on your chosen topic.
It should have a single organising principle:
You could choose:
To avoid plagiarism and losing valuable marks make sure you reference correctly.
The USW referencing guides are available on the Library webpage. USW Harvard is based on the book Cite them right, so if you can't find what you need in our guide, consult this book. It is available as an ebook or in print.
