Writing a literature review for a report is a very practical task — there is not much room for creativity here, you just have to follow the basics and you will come up with a satisfying result. Of course, if you want something more impressive, you will have to add some “personality,” but still there is not much you can do in terms of customizing your literature review. Let’s look through the mentioned basics borrowed from literature review writers from WriteMyPaperHub together, so when you receive this assignment, you can just follow the list step by step and avoid most of the common mistakes.
Literature on tablet pc screen, ebook concept
Decide on the organizational order of your literature review, as there are several options.
– You may have strict recommendations stated by your professor, based on MLA, APA, Harward, etc. formatting styles. In this case you just open citation manuals and do as they tell you to do.
- If you have a right to be more free with what you write, than you should first of all think about classic alphabetical order. Using this order you will write a literature review faster, as you want have any need in extra classification, in finding another logic.
- You can organize your writing by source. In this case you make a list in alphabetical or chronological order, and you describe the used sources one by one. You can also unite sources based on their general characteristics, for example, books separately, articles in journals separately, your own previous experiments separately again. This system is rather common when it comes to the papers which require multiple sources of a different kind.
- You can organize your literature review by the topic. It is the hardest way, and most probably you won’t choose it for your report, but we would like you to keep in mind. Using this option, you diversify sources based on the major idea, topic, theme, and describe each research, entry, study you used in this section. The problem is, one source can fall in several categories, and then you should once again decide on the logic of your review.
- You should not feel disappointed if you choose the simplest option – alphabetical order. Choosing this option you will never get lost and will be done with your literature review much faster.
Here are some extra hints on how to finish your review faster and make it more quality:
- Use citation generators. You will have to spend some time once to find the most appropriate and up-to-date service, but later it will save you lots of time and energy. Make sure to find the one that supports all the latest updates to MLA and APA manuals.
- Set timers to track your progress. It is very easy to get lost when you decide to rest just for a minute and this minute turns into 25 minutes on Facebook, YouTube, etc. So, when you want to take a break, immediately set the alarm to remind you to come back to work.
- Check literature review for grammar and style mistakes. Though it is rather repetitive, it is just the same text as any other and you can lose points for technical omissions. So, use grammar checkers first to eliminate the most basic errors, and later read what you’ve written aloud.
- Be careful with plagiarism. When describing some bibliography entry you can repeat some things said by other students about it, as there are not too many options when it comes to describing technical literature.
When it comes to literature review your major task is just to do everything right without too much creativity and mistakes. Good luck!