How To Write A Literature Review For Your Thesis

A Literature Review is a study of the original and primary scholarship on a particular topic. It does not study the topic itself, just the research that has been conducted on that topic. The aim of a Literature Review is to review, analysis and evaluate these sources to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify a gap in the current literature that the thesis aims to fill. The Literature Review provides the background to and justification for the research.

A review of the relevant dissertation on a particular topic is a vital component of all research degrees. There are many reasons why a review of the current literature should be conducted before beginning a research project. These include:

To identify any gaps in the literature
To avoid unnecessarily repeating work that has been carried out already
To identify important research, sources, views and theories in your field
To identify other researchers working in the same field
To allow you to understand and explain the context into which your thesis will fit
To develop ideas on how best you could undertake your own research

There are four stages to conducting the review. The first stage is to define your project. To do this you will need to know the topic or field you wish to write your thesis on. The second stage is to search for the literature. This involves searching through libraries, journal databases, the internet and other places to find all the relevant sources on your topic. You will be looking for books, monographs, journal articles, conference papers, theses, reports, papers, and studies.

The third stage is to evaluate and analyze the literature you have found. You will evaluate the sources to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to discover which sources make the most significant contribution to the field. You will analyze and interpret the literature in order to discover what information is relevant to your thesis. At this point, you will begin dividing the literature into categories. The fourth stage is to write the Literature Review itself.

The introduction should contain:

A definition of the topic or field and the objectives of the Literature Review
A introduction to the overall trends, conflicts, conclusions or themes that will be discussed
An indication of how the sources have been divided for discussion
An indication of the gap found in the literature that the thesis aims to fill

The body should contain:

A division of the literature into categories for review
A summary and analysis of each of the sources, a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses, an explanation of what they contribute to the field, and a description of how the sources differ from each other
A discussion of the gap identified in the current literature and how your thesis will attempt to fill it
Remember to structure the body of the Literature Review as you would an academic essay, making sure it is well organized and structured

The conclusion should contain:

Conclusions regarding which sources make the most valuable contribution to the understanding and development of the area of research, maintaining the focus established in the introduction
A summary of the gap identified in the current literature and how your thesis will attempt to fill it

Once you have written your Literature Review, the final step is to have it professionally edited by an academic editor. This will ensure that your work is presented in the best possible way, in formal academic language, and free from grammatical and other errors.

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