Description: In academic writing, following structural requirements is a must. However, it doesn’t mean that’s enough to write a compelling piece. In this guide, let’s check some of the dos and don’ts to create an appealing literature review and submit your assignment without difficulty.
How to Write an Interesting Literature Review: Expert Tips to Boost Your Skills
This type of academic writing is an overview of a certain literature. It may be an independent text or a part of a research paper as one of its chapters. A lot depends on what kind of literature review you will need to compose — a categorical and chronological discussion of the topic or its critical evaluation and summary.
Whether it is an essential part of a larger project or a distinctive assignment to complete, your task is to ensure its appeal in the readers’ eyes. Even if your expertise in the field isn’t skyrocketing, it is possible to achieve excellent results. In this guide, you will get to know more about the strategies to help you write an attention-grabbing literature review.
Literature Review Structure
Before diving into the insights of writing intriguing and attention-grabbing reviews, it is crucial to understand what structural core will help you implement diverse ideas and strategies. As in the case of a typical essay, your paragraphs will boil down to an introductory section, a body, and a conclusion. In an extended version, it will also include an abstract.
At the same time, some structural variations may easily take place. Whether you want to follow a chronological or reverse-chronological order of events is up to you. Please note that your task isn’t just to provide the research and analysis findings — include several sources on top of providing the general content to readers.
In the conclusion section, you will describe your findings in the form of a summary. Although it would be a mistake to include new facts or statements in these paragraphs, you can specify what methodology, research, and other theme-related recommendations can contribute to the multifaceted analysis of the target topic.
5C Guideline to Create a Good Literature Review
If you keep these principles in mind, you will be able to improve the quality of any type of academic writing you will ever have to write.
- Concision — you don’t have to reach the higher limit for the number of words for your literature review assignment. It is better to complete the assignment in a self-sustainable and efficient manner rather than to explain the same things, in other words, just for the sake of increasing the volume of your writing.
- Clarity — don’t forget that you write a review. You must avoid any ambiguity that may damage your argument and evidence to prove your point of view. Otherwise, you will seem like a poorly knowledgeable student with a lack of understanding of the target literature source.
- Completeness — your research will cover a wide range of matters related to the target topic. Still, it is better to wholesomely analyze a few important themes rather than state numerous arguments and not provide enough evidence to highlight your view.
- Conventionality — make a plan to stick to. While it is crucial to follow the APA or another formatting style requirement, it is not less essential to build a review with clear paragraphs and headings.
- Cogency — don’t let the text’s logic go wild. To make things simpler, follow this pattern — present your assumption, highlight your evidence, and conclude. It will also help readers understand what you are talking about better.
Tips on Creating an Appealing Literature Review for Readers
Rely on the steps below to ensure you are up in arms for achieving A+ results with your literature review.
Define the To-Be-Reviewed Topic
The clearer your definition of the theme to discuss in a literature review is, the easier it will be to choose your research and analysis methods. Otherwise, it will be more challenging to find proper evidence and use auxiliary data sources as citing materials. In a draft-like form, try to rephrase the topic you will check from several perspectives and identify what keywords will come in handy for in-depth analysis.
Thorough Literature Search
Books, articles, videos, and other information sources can become your canvas for backing up the literature review’s point of view. With proper keywords, it will be simpler to find published or digital data sources that match the target assignment. While there are professional databases to rely on, you can also use search engines like Google to check and upload scholarly articles and other relevant pieces of information.
Summarize Your Findings
Don’t forget to take notes while checking your literature sources. It is a pretty time-consuming process, but it is more efficient to work on your review’s content in a draft form while reading through research papers rather than writing down your thoughts afterward. Mark pages to return to later and highlight the key ideas so that you won’t have to reread those articles and books over and over again.
Write, Edit, and Proofread
Take your time to create the text’s outline. Revise your copy to get rid of mistakes that will “eat up” your final score. You can consult with your peers, checking their reactions and impressions of your text — that’s how you can predict what the target audience will like more and adapt your text accordingly.
Final Thoughts
Don’t get discouraged if your first try isn’t as successful as you thought it would be. The key to writing great literature reviews is practice — you should always treat it as an independent project with its unique requirements. Or you can ask for help from cheap essay writing service. They will guide you and make the process easier. The more thorough your preparations are, the easier it will be to transform a text draft into an attention-grabbing, efficient, and informative piece of academic writing. At the end of the day, your work has to assist readers in achieving one of the main format’s goals — getting a general scope of the target topic without surfing hundreds of sources individually.
