The Literature Review
Learning Objectives
- Describe a literature review and explain its purpose;
- Describe the steps in undertaking a literature review
- Demonstrate how to write a literature review
- Identify acceptable sources to include in your literature review;
- List of the five ‘C’s of writing a literature review.
- Compare a literature review, an essay and an annotated bibliography.
- Explain the importance of APA referencing and list some of the sources for getting assistance with APA referencing.
In this chapter, we will focus on writing a literature review. As part of this focus we concentrate on four key aspects, as follows: 1) explaining the purpose behind a literature review and where it fits in the research process; 2) explaining how a literature review is different from an essay and an annotated bibliography, 3) describing the special aspects that distinguish a literature review from other styles of academic writing, and 4) explaining how to conduct a literature review and why it is important to review previous research studies. If you have never written a literature review, and even if you have, this chapter will provide valuable information for you. Understanding how to write a literature review is important because it is quite likely that you will have to do another one at some point in your academic and/or professional career.
