1. Planning the Literature Review
Unit 7
Planning the Literature Review
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2. Contents Defining Literature Review Purposes of Literature Review
Components of Literature Review
Organizing Literature Review
Chinese Students’ common problems in writing Literature Review
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3. 7.1 Defining Literature Review
Literature Review is a critical examination of documents (published and occasionally unpublished) available on the researched topic, as well as a comprehensive evaluation of these documents in relation to the research goals being proposed.
It is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another.
Its purpose is not only to tell the reader the state of scholarship about a given topic, but also to organize and evaluate the major points or arguments of each source.
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4. Reasons for spending time and expending effort on the literature review before embarking on a research project
identifying gaps or holes in the literature;
avoiding “reinventing the wheel”;
carrying on from where others have already reached and give credit for what they have done;
identifying other people working in the same fields;
increasing breadth of the knowledge of a subject area;
identifying seminal works in your area and information and ideas that may be relevant to your project;
providing the intellectual context for your own work, enabling you to position your project relative to other work;
identifying opposing views;
putting your work into perspective;
demonstrating that you can access previous work in an area;
identifying methods that could be relevant to your project.
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5. 7.2 Purposes of Literature Review
A basic requirement for the research students is that they should understand the history of the subject they intend to study.
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6. Gall et al. (1996) argue that the literature review plays a role in
delimiting the research problem
seeking new lines of inquiry
avoiding fruitless approaches
gaining methodological insights
identifying recommendations for further research
seeking support for grounded theory
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7. The review serves the following purposes in research (Hart 1998):
to distinguish what has been done from what needs to be done;
to discover important variables relevant to the topic;
to synthesize and gain a new perspective;
to identify relationships between ideas and practice;
to establish the context of the topic or problem;
to rationalize the significance of the problem;
to enhance and acquire the subject vocabulary;
to understand the structure of the subject;
to relate ideas and theory to applications;
to identify the main methodologies and research techniques that have been used;
to place the research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments.
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8. 7.3 Components of Literature Review
Three basic elements:
an introduction or background information section
the body of the review containing the discussion of sources
a conclusion and/or recommendations to end the section or chapter
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9. The introduction: (P. 99)
explains the focus and establishes the importance of the subject
discusses what kind of work has been done on the topic
identifies any controversies within the field or any recent research which has raised questions about earlier assumptions
provides background or history
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10. The body: (P. 100)
summarizes and evaluates the current state of knowledge in the field
notes major themes or topics, the most important trends, and any findings about which researchers agree or disagree
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11. The conclusion: (P. 101)
summarizes all the evidence presented and shows its significance.
provides a summary of YOUR findings from the Literature Review
explains what your analysis of the material leads you to conclude about the overall state of the literature, what it provides and where it is lacking
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12. 7.4 Organizing Literature Review
It is good to make use of subheadings to bring order and coherence to your review.
The concepts must be presented in an order that makes sense, with clear divisions in the sets of ideas to be discussed.
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13. Common ways to organize information in a literature review
Chronologically: starting with the earliest work on the topic and moving through to the latest. Be careful not just to list items; you need to write critically, not just descriptively.
By theoretical perspective: identifying the key theorists and theories that have shaped subsequent writing on the topic.
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14. Common ways to organize information in a literature review
In the order of significance or relevance: used where studies or writing on the topic fall into a range of significant or less significant findings. There may also be varying degrees of relevance amongst the range of studies dealing with a topic.
By methodological type: used when different methodological approaches have clearly affected the findings of the studies.
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15. Common ways to organize information in a literature review
By issue or theme (thematically): grouping a broad range of loosely associated research into a set of common subject areas (or themes). These themes will form the basis of the different threads that are the focus of your study.
By sector: e.g., theoretical background, practice background, methodological background;
By development of ideas: this could be useful if there are identifiable stages of idea development that can be looked at in turn.
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16. Examples:
P. 103
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17. 7.5 Chinese Students’ common problems in writing Literature Review
lack good organization, unity and coherence;
fail to cite essential pertinent studies;
fail to keep up with recent developments;
be repetitive and verbose;
fail to critically evaluate cited papers;
cite irrelevant or trivial references;
depend too much on secondary sources;
fail to focus;
fail to maintain a coherent, logical flow;
weak organization;
poor language, grammar etc.
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18. Examples:
P. 104
P. 105
P. 106
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19. Check your understanding
True or False
As a piece of discursive prose, a literature is a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another.
Literature reviews survey research done in a particular area. Although they also evaluate methods and results, their main emphasis is on knitting together theories and results from a number of studies to describe the “big picture” of a research field.
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20. Check your understanding
The body of a literature review discusses and evaluates previous studies that lead directly to your own project according to specific organizational principles, rather than addressing each source separately.
Without establishing the state of the previous research, it is impossible to establish how the new research advances the previous research.
An effective literature review should reveal the weaknesses of past studies on the given topic and how the current research contributes to this field in the advancement of knowledge.
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21. In-Class Activities
1. The following is the Literature Review section of Cindy Brantmeier’s article published in The Modern Language Journal (2005). Read it carefully and check how the author organizes her literature review.
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22. 2. The following are two versions of a student’s literature review
2. The following are two versions of a student’s literature review. The first example is an early draft. The second example is a revised version.
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23. 3. Creswell (2003) argues that the main purpose of the literature review section in a thesis is to justify the value of the research and to show why it is distinct from what is documented in the literature. Centrality claims are “appeals to the discourse community whereby members are asked to accept that the research about to be reported is part of a lively, significant or well-established research area.” Centrality claims are made in two ways: either by assertions about the importance of the topic discussed or by assertions concerning active research activity in the area concerned. Read the following the Literature Review section of a research paper.
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24. 4. Read the following sample of the Literature Review section taken from an MA thesis.
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25. 5. Read the following paragraph from the Literature Review section on Gulliver’s Travels.
6. Read the following excerpt of a literature review, and then answer the questions.
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26. Post-Class Tasks
1. Read the following excerpt carefully. Discuss what this passage is mainly about and whether this paragraph develops smoothly. Analyze it to find out the conclusion that the writer draws from his analysis. If you are not happy with the way the writer presents his literature review, try to make some revisions.
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27. 2. Select a research article in Applied Linguistics, and examine how the author organizes other studies in his or her literature review section (for example, by theme, time, methodology, etc.)
3. Within each section of a literature review, it is important to discuss how the research relates to other studies (how is it similar or different, what other studies have been done, etc.) as well as to demonstrate how it relates to your own work. Organizing your review thematically is a good way to help you resist the urge to list out your sources. Read the excerpt from the literature review section, and check out how the author organizes his review thematically.
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28. 4. Read the following review of related studies of recitation, which is taken from an MA thesis by a Chinese writer of English. Are you satisfied with his way of presenting the literature review? Offer some suggestions as to how he should revise it.
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29. 5. The following are abstracts of three research articles related to age issues in second language acquisition. Use a table to compare the key differences among them.
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30. Project Work
Randomly collect 2 linguistic theses and 2 literature theses written for Master’s Degree by students from a top university in China. Compare how the authors conduct the literature review to see if students of linguistics do the same as those of literature.
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