Want to impress your supervisor with an excellently penned-down literature review? We got your back! If you want updated guidelines on how to write the best literature review in 2023, this article is the perfect place for you.
Writing a literature review is a time-consuming and challenging task. A literature search for a dissertation takes time, and curating the relevant work is not an easy job. With the help of a few dedicated guidelines, you can write a literature review that wins your professor and helps you get good grades.
Let’s begin from scratch.
How to Increase the Worth of My Literature Review in Dissertation?
A dissertation literature review demands you to conduct extensive research and come up with the best relevant material for your work. A well-researched and well-written literature review helps you build trust in the minds of your readers.
There are four key methods which you can employ to increase the worth of your literature review. Those effective methods are discussed here briefly:
1. Reading
The first and foremost thing to do if you want to ace the literature review section in your dissertation is to read. Read extensively, as much as you can. Do not just skim the contents of a paper while doing so; research the source properly and dig out the relevant reading material.
The more you research your source, the better able you will be to find out if it’s credible and peer-reviewed. Doing so enhances your critical review skills and improves your ability of analytical thinking.
Questions to Ask Yourself When Researching The Sources:
Now when you start searching for the relevant sources for your dissertation literature review, you will meet ambiguity. You might feel stuck on what to add and what not to in your papers. We have solved your problem!
Ask yourself these questions and decide whether to include the sources or exclude them based on the answers you get:
- Are the researchers of the work in question reputed or not?
- What was the original purpose of the research you are reading?
- To what degree is the research important in the relevant field of study?
- Is the research work directly relevant to your work or not?
- See if the conclusions and the objectives of the research are interlinked with each other or not.
These questions will help you ascertain the relevance of the research material to your work. Depending on the degree of relevance, you can choose to add the reading material to the literature review or skip it.
2. Organising the Gathered Data
Once you collect enough relevant data for your literature review, it will be time to organise it. Making a literature review outline will serve different helpful purposes in this case. It gives a sense of direction to your work and helps you decide how much time to dedicate to an individual section of your dissertation.
The benefits of organising your work are many; it keeps your ideas managed. You do not skip the main arguments when they are organised effectively. You save time because you do not have to waste it finding references later; everything comes in handy.
4 Ways of Organising Your Literature Review
- Thematic (just like an essay)
- Chronological (based on time)
- Author’s perspective (their respective school of thought)
- The methods of research used
These four ways are generally used to manage a literature review in a dissertation. You can also take help from a dissertation writing service online to structure and organise your work.
3. Writing a Literature Review
Finally, you get to the writing part of your literature review. Based on the significance of this part, you must know how to write it in a scholarly manner. There are some factors that you must take care of when you are writing a literature review.
Two Key Elements of a Lit Review
You can shift between using both of these elements in your lit review – it depends on you. You will need to figure out first where to use descriptive elements and when to shift to the interpretive way.
Selecting when to use each of these elements in your work sharpens your judgement skills. The details of both these elements are mentioned here:
a) Descriptive Element
Also called a reporting element, it tells the reader what happened in the research and what did the author find. It guides the readers on the core of your literature review and has a descriptive tone of writing.
b) Critical Element
The critical element of a literature review, also known as the interpretive element, is a dialogue between your research and its interpretation. In this form of review, you ask the questions and answer them. Then, you analyse and interpret the given information.
4. Responding to the Critique
Here comes the best approach to writing a literature review for your dissertation: write while responding to the critique. Mention what you found during your research, present your critique, and then tell your solution to the audience. It is a layered approach.
It gives worth and value to your work and lifts its impression in the eyes of the research community. While presenting your critique, stay careful about the language you use. It may be a strengths critique or a deficit critique; whichever you choose, remember to keep the language polite and suited to the needs of academia.
Conclusion
If you follow these tips for writing your literature review, rest assured that it will be brilliant. Professors get impressed by such well-crafted work, and you will get the grades you want. Ensure that you cover all the major aspects of writing and revise your literature review before the final submission.
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