How To Write A Literature Review For A Research Paper: Tips And Samples

When you create a research paper, you will gather a lot of books, articles, papers and documents that served as inspiration and help for your project. If you want to take your project to another level, you can create a literature review that starts from these research materials that you used. Even if the name might be confusing, you are not actually reviewing a book or an article. It is much more complex, but much more appreciated by your teacher. These tips will teach you how to create a great literature review:

  • Establish your topic first. If it’s the topic that you used for your research paper, you can skip this step. Otherwise, it’s necessary to find a suitable topic. Also, the main ideas of your subject need to be clarified right from the beginning, so you will not try to approach too many aspects at the same time and create chaos. Write down, on a list, the general ideas that are part of your topic.
  • Gather all your materials. You need to find every piece of information that was ever published about the topic that you will use, and by this I mean books, articles, research papers or essays. IF you want to save some time, you can make all your research online, and you will spend considerably less time than you would spend in a library. Your research methods will dictate how successful your paper will be.
  • Pick the most relevant information from the one that you found. Be aware that you need to establish connections between materials, papers or books and that you need to compare them. In a literature review, you have to offer a relevant perspective on the literature published on a specific topic, but not everything is considered to be relevant and important.
  • Proofread everything and ask for feedback. After you finished creating the project itself, you can start correcting and editing the content. You shouldn’t rush this process, as the grammar and punctuation of a composition have a crucial role, and they will be carefully analyzed by your teacher. When you think that everything is done, ask for feedback from your professor or some good students. You will see that there are still mistakes that you missed, and you need to correct them before you submit the paper.