Writing a Literature Review

Writing a literary report may be one of the most time-intensive writing assignments a student undertakes in the course of his or her studies.  This is because writing a literary report requires extensive research and detailed organization.  Writing literature reviews is different from writing other types of academic texts because it requires the writer to be an objective reporter of information rather than an engaged participant in the conversation about that information.  In other words, a literary report is not a text that seeks to advance the writer's ideas or opinions on a particular topic; it is presented with the sole purpose of offering an overview of relevant research on a topic.

A literature review may be one part of a larger text, such as a dissertation or journal article, or it may be a single text in itself.  Writing a literary report will be the same regardless of the literature review's final form: it requires the organized, logical, and comprehensive presentation of all of the scholarly material related to a specific topic.  The point of writing literature reviews is to compile important research on a topic in order to be aware of previous investigation into that topic so that the researcher can attempt to contribute something new to that body of research .

When writing literature reviews, it is best to plan the organization of the data before beginning the writing process.  This will help the literature review be understandable, and will also help the writer approach the literature review in the most efficient way.  Therefore, it may be helpful to create a rough outline of the order in which the material will be presented before beginning.  Keep in mind that it is always advisable to present general information first and then work into more complex studies.

Writing a literary report is, as mentioned, similar to presenting a report.  It should therefore be both objective and very detailed.  Each study discussed in the literature review should have its own paragraph or set of paragraphs describing the authors of the research, the year in which the research was published, the objectives of the study, the way the study was executed, and the study's results or findings.  After all of the relevant studies have been discussed in this way, the literature review should conclude by summarizing the main points presented in the review and pointing to any conclusions the research as a whole makes about the topic at hand.  It should then suggest possible areas for future research regarding the topic.

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