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Provide a connection between the sources to ensure the reader understands how each is related to the others and how they tie into your overall study area or research. Are the arguments and conclusions the author presents adequately convincing? Does the author’s work contribute significantly to the overall understanding of the subject matter? Make sure to include all inconsistencies, mistakes, and omissions of each source. Provide a critical analysis of each source, including information on the argument, methodology, and concluding statement.ĭescribe the strengths and weaknesses of your sources. Keep in mind the tips below as you write. When writing the introduction, you will be presenting the topic of your review to your audience. In this last part, you can also address the question of your research’s place in the existing knowledge. Finally, you would sum up all the key findings in conclusion. The main body needs to include the discussion of the sources you selected following the organizational strategy you chose. You might as well talk about the gaps in research there. There should be your topic and its significance mentioned, background theories, and a brief explanation of your methodology and outline in the introduction. It’s essential that you don’t mix your literature review structure and include the correct information in each part. For instance, look into the differences between the results of qualitative and quantitative research. It might be a good idea to compare and contrast the findings and conclusions that appear from various approaches. In that case, you noticed that they all use distinct research methods. You might have chosen to collect the sources for your literature review from different fields. However, if it’s a dissertation, the literature review might need to take up as much as twenty-five percent of your whole piece! Generally speaking, one-fifth of the total size of your paper would be enough. In case the length of the literature review is not mentioned in the requirements, there are a few hints to help you understand what to aim for.
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It contrasts and compares them together in detail. Meanwhile, a literature review is a complex examination of multiple sources and their relations. The first one can only analyze each source depending on its relevance to your topic, and it’s relatively brief.
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There is a slight difference between an annotated bibliography and a literature review. This way, you know what gap to fill exactly and what issues have already been resolved by other researchers. As mentioned above, this type of writing allows you to build a strong base for your future research.īesides, you can gain even more knowledge on the topic while going through all the previous studies! And you will show it off to the readers so that they have more confidence in your reliability! Moreover, it helps you identify which areas of the field that you chose need some improvement. So you might still be wondering about the importance of the literature review. From those, you can finally see your research gap!
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