A literature review is an important part of a piece of writing, particularly a dissertation or a thesis. In this section, you would critically examine relevant work covering the field and related fields pertinent to the subject at hand. It allows you to gain and derive insights, and understand the general points of view of others covering the field.
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Introduce the literature review, why you need it and what you can gain from it - the introduction informs the reader of what you are doing exactly in this section, the literature review may seem standard but there is a good reason that you are doing it, not just because it is a requirement. You want to explain what the literature review can do for your work specifically, why the opinions and work of others can inform your project overall.
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Explain your research objectives in the literature review - once you have explain the purpose and need of a literature review, you would wish to explain the specific points which you wish to discover through existing literature. Your overall paper would aim to answer a question, which would typically involve a major overarching idea, this can have several sub ideas associated with it. You would typically, through your literature review, aim to discover ideas about these sub ideas and the overarching idea.
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Explain your theoretical and conceptual framework - these are two important frameworks which overall guide your literature review. The theoretical framework generally guides your overall research, based on the current theories supporting your work. The conceptual framework is a representation of the relations between the different sections and factors of your work.
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There are several important points from each piece that you wish to find out - the overall argument put forward by the author(s), how the piece of literature overall contributes to the field, how it assists and can help inform your research, and what the literature may not address.
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Don’t just focus on literature examining exactly the subject or field you are examining, you would want to examine adjacent, but relevant and related literature - this helps by revealing other insights which can provide a more holistic view to your research, by considering a wider variety of perspectives. Additionally, if the overall topic studied by a piece of literature is the same as yours, however, the specific case study is different, this is still very valuable to assess as you can examine how the same techniques, methodology, subject, etc, are applied to a similar area, which can also allow you to compare and contrast your work.
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In your literature review’s conclusion, discuss what you have overall learnt from the literature review - having analysed a range of different sources, you should have a clearer picture of the subject area, general and popular opinions. Highlight these main points, and explain how they overall guide your essay.
hope your dissertation goes well!
