Literature Review is an important part of writing. It shows the readers the way a student can analyze data and build own theory leaning from the existing experience. Literature Review writing skills come with time, but if you do not have them, read our writing tips.
 
Your literature review is not a simple listing of sources. It is a thorough work written as a chapter of dissertation. Literature review is extremely important. It shows the readers how you worked with sources, what you took as additional material, and what was criticized by you as out-of-date or not thorough enough.
 
Here is what a literature review should be:

1. A literature review should be your critical discussion, where all of the used materials are examined under the microscope, and analyzed from all positions.
2. A literature review must contain some comparing and contrasting ideas. Everything will depend on the way you organize writing, but there should be a certain structure.
3. A good literature review always shows gaps in research. These gaps need to be filled up with personal theoretical works.
4. In a literature review your study has to be related to previous studies somehow. If some sources do not exactly match the topic and are listed in a literature review just to create the vision of work, it is not a good idea.
5. A literature review has to have a research question.
6. No matter how unsatisfied you are with some sources, your criticism should not be bigger than objectivity. As a researcher you still have to maintain a neutral position, favoring not someone’s opinions, but balancing between facts. A position in your literature review should be stated with the help of arguments, not appellations to emotions.
7. And the last rule of the literature review says – edit the final product.

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