Name: Writing the Literature Review (Part One): Step-by-Step Tutorial for Graduate Students
Uploaded: 2024-10-10T08:20:58.000Z
Duration: 5 min 22 s
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Writing the Literature Review, an Effective Writing Center Tutorial, here at the University of Maryland, University College.

To-infinitive

Hello everyone, my name is David Taylor, and it's a real pleasure to be with you today to talk about this thing right here, the literature review.

Past simple

You know, I thought a good way to begin today would be to talk about, not what the literature review is first, but to maybe first talk about what the literature review is not.

And one thing that the literature review is not, is that it is not an essay.

The literature review is part of your essay.

The literature review is part of your research paper.

Or maybe it's a stand-alone product, if you're in a master's degree or doctoral degree program, and you have to do that first.

But regardless of whether it's part of your research essay, or a stand-alone product, one thing the literature review does not do, it does not state, prove, illustrate, cooperate, or develop your main points.

It does not provide the body or development section of your essay, or your paper.

Well, the literature review is divided into the following key terms.

First is this whole idea of, what the heck is the literature?

The literature is simply those major works that have been published about your narrow topic.

Now remember, I said narrow topic there, because you're not going to be reviewing every published thing on a broad topic like steroid use by athletes.

You're going to have a more narrow topic like steroid use by high school athletes, or steroid use by baseball players.

And so you're going to be reviewing the major works just on that narrow topic.

So that's the first thing that you need to know.

The literature is the published, peer-reviewed sources on a narrow topic.

The second thing the literature review is, is that that narrow topic and all those sources published on it are going to be reviewed.

Well, a review is simply a way of looking at something and taking a snapshot of it.

And what is that snapshot going to capture?

That snapshot is going to capture the major concepts, the major points, the major outcomes, the major whatever in that source.

It's not going to be a detailed write-up of that one source.

And then once you get all those snapshots done, you're going to show the relationships between those snapshots.

And in talking about those relationships, you're probably going to be putting them in some kind of timeline situation.

But the key is that you're going to be extracting just the major elements and then the relationships among those major elements, maybe on a timeline type situation.

Now, the next thing to know about the literature review is why the heck are you doing all this stuff?

Well, I think there are three reasons probably why you're doing all this stuff in school.

And the first one is, of course, to improve your own understanding.

As an undergraduate researcher coming into these topics or into this discipline on the undergraduate level, one of the first things that you have to do is to build your understanding, build your background, build your expertise in a particular discipline and subjects in that discipline.

Then, and of course in this paper, once you have built your expertise or your knowledge in this particular subject, you're going to be demonstrating that knowledge, demonstrating that expertise to your professor, because this is a college assignment.

But you know what the real purpose of a literature review is?

It's something you're doing as a favor for your readers.

Have you ever had this experience where you've run into an old friend after a number of years?

What's the first thing you and that old friend do?

You ask each other, hey, what have you been doing all these years?

You're doing the same thing in a literature review.

And by bringing them up to date, then you can start at the present again.

You kind of bring them along that timeline of the past, letting them know the key element.

And once you're there, boom, then you can start.

And that's the dividing line between the literature review and the rest of your paper or the development.

You go all their ideas, the past scholars, the past researchers, boom.

 And then come your ideas, your present life, so to speak.