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• Lesson 3: Fundamental Writing Skills

Literature Reviews in the Sciences

• Introduction
• Lesson 1: What is a Literature Review
• Lesson 2: Fundamental Research Skills
• Lesson 4: Resources

Composing the Review

It’s a common misconception that researching and writing a literature review is a straightforward process that starts with research and ends with writing. The reality is that research and writing are intertwined, often with one process informing and reinforcing the other. This chapter of the micro-course provides some guidance in how to approach writing as a recursive and integrated process that most effectively (and efficiently!) occurs along with your research.

A helpful analogy for thinking about the interconnected activities of researching and writing is that of a band performing music. While individual musicians in a band will sometimes play louder, and some musicians may stop playing their instruments during a song, the musicians all remain on stage together, building on and responding to one another. Similarly, while you may conduct more research or more writing at different points during your literature review process, the two activities are very much interrelated, building on each other and responding to each other. To try to conduct your research and write completely separately would be like playing only one instrument in a band at a time—it wouldn’t sound very cohesive.

Analogy: Literature Reviews as Playing in a Band

Open Band Analogy in a new window

Read sample literature reviews rhetorically

As you conduct your research, you will likely read many sources that model the same kind of literature review that you yourself are researching and writing. While your original intent in reading those sources is likely to learn from the studies’ content (e.g. their results and discussion), it will benefit you to re-read these articles rhetorically.

Reading rhetorically means paying attention to how a text is written—how it has been structured, how it presents its claims and analyses, how it employs transitional words and phrases to move from one idea to the next. You might also pay attention to an author’s stylistic choices, like the use of first-person pronouns, active and passive voice, or technical terminology.

Consider this notion:  Reading sample literature reviews rhetorically constitutes a form of writing.  It does! When you read to write you are likely composing thoughts and experimenting with organization in your head. That cognitive activity is crucial to building familiarity with the nebulous literature review genre, and it also helps to build an effective and efficient writing process that works for you.

Write informally along the way

Writing can (and should!) be folded into your research process. It’s not only a strategy for getting the writing process started earlier, but a means of deepening your thinking about your project.

You might, for instance, incorporate informal writing activities into your data collection and management by writing short  summaries  or critiques of sources as you read them (you may know this strategy as creating an “annotated bibliography”). Alternatively, you might fill out pre-made  templates  for your sources to ensure you record all the most important information (e.g. experimental methods used, populations studied), or you might  annotate  your sources directly by hand or electronically.

Click on the following headings to learn more about each of these informal writing strategies.

Informal Writing Strategies

How this strategy works:

In addition to tracking citation information for all your selected sources, an annotated bibliography collects short descriptions of each source in one space. In a document, spreadsheet, notebook, or  citation manager , keep a running list of all the sources you intend to incorporate into your review. For each source, set aside some space to write a brief summary after you have read the source carefully. Your summary might be simply informative (i.e. identify the main argument or hypothesis, methods, major findings, and/or conclusions), or it might be evaluative as well (i.e. state why the source is interesting or useful for your review, or why it is not).

Why this strategy might be useful:

Taking the time to write short informative and/or evaluative summaries of your sources while you are researching can help you transition into the drafting stage later on. By making a record of your sources’ contents and your reactions to them, you make it less likely that you will need to go back and re-read many sources while drafting, and you might also start to gain a clearer idea of the overarching shape of your review.

You can find this information (and more!) in the Writing Center’s online  Writer’s Handbook section on Annotated Bibliographies .

This strategy might be used by itself or in combination with writing summaries. To create a template, consider what will be the most important information for you to glean from your sources as you read them. Then, write short prompts for yourself in a document, spreadsheet, or notebook that will remind you to gather that information. Copy these prompts for each source, and write short responses to each prompt as you read. Here are some sample prompts you might incorporate into a note-taking template:

• Bibliographic information (author(s), title, journal, etc.):
• Purpose or aims of the study:
• Major claims, hypothesis, or argument:
• Main findings and issues raised in discussion (i.e. the major take-aways):
• What’s especially valuable about it? What are its limitations? How is it relevant to your project?

A note-taking template can help ensure that you gather information consistently across all the sources you collect, and can serve as a self-reminder to evaluate the usefulness and relevance of sources as your project progresses.

Annotating sources refers to the process of writing notes directly on your reading material (e.g. articles, patents, etc.). This might be done digitally, as when  adding comments to a PDF document , or manually, as when writing on a print copy. Annotating a source is often used in combination with highlighting or other means of visually drawing attention to specific content. Importantly, annotations reflect  your own  ideas and reactions to the content of a source (as opposed to simply repeating what already appears in the text).

Annotating a source while reading it can deepen your engagement with its content—its ideas, arguments, methods, and findings. Be sure to consider whether digital or hard copy will be more accessible for you (e.g. is managing screen fatigue a priority for you?), as well as how you would like to be able search for and find your annotations at a later date.

Once you have done enough research that you feel you’re in a good position to begin drafting in earnest, it will be important to consider what the overall structure of your literature review will look like. As you know from previous lessons, the type and form of your review will dictate to a large degree the structure of your final product.

It will be important for you to find example literature reviews of the same type and form that you are writing so that you can get a sense of the specific expectations of that kind of review. If possible, you might look at specific examples that also target the same audience and pursue the same purposes as your own literature review. For example, you might find sample dissertation chapters written by peers with the same adviser as you; or you might find reviews published in the same journal that you’re submitting to.

With a clear sense of what the final product should look like, you might begin drafting your literature review in a number of ways. Some writers like to begin by  outlining  the different sections of the review, either in broad strokes or in specific detail. Other writers like to begin with a  mind map  of all their collected sources to help them envision relationships among them. Yet other writers like to begin with  freewriting , which allows them to get ideas onto the page and deal with organization later.

Click on the following headings to learn more about each of these drafting strategies.

Drafting Strategies

Take the sources, ideas and connections you’ve generated and write them out in the order you might address first, second, third, etc. Use subpoints to create hierarchies of logic through which you might introduce specific groups or categories of sources. Maybe you want to identify specific conclusions or methodologies within the sources you might use. Maybe you want to keep your outline elements general. Do whatever is most useful to help you think through the sequence of your ideas. Remember that outlines can and should be revised as you continue to develop and refine the flow of your review.

Outlines emphasize the sequence and hierarchy of ideas—your main points and subpoints as represented by the sources you’ve selected. If you have identified several key ideas emerging from the literature you have reviewed, outlining can help you consider how to best guide your readers through these ideas. What do your readers need to understand first? Where might certain studies fit most naturally? These are the kinds of questions that an outline can clarify.

You can find this information (and more!) in the Writing Center’s online  Writer’s Handbook section on Outlining .

This technique is a form of brainstorming that lets you visualize how your ideas function and relate. To get started, you might find a blank sheet of unlined paper or, for a larger work area, a whiteboard. You could also download software that lets you easily manipulate and group text, images, and shapes (like  Coggle ,  FreeMind , or  MindMaple ). Write down a central idea, then identify associated concepts, features, or questions around that idea. If some of those thoughts need expanding, continue this map, cluster, or web in whatever direction makes sense to you. Make lines attaching various ideas, or arrows to signify directional relationships. Add and rearrange individual elements or whole subsets as necessary. Use different shapes, sizes, or colors to indicate commonalities, sequences, or relative importance.

This drafting technique allows you to generate ideas while thinking visually about how they function together. As you follow lines of thought, you can see which ideas can be connected, where certain pathways lead, and what the scope of your project might look like. Additionally, by drawing out a map you may be able to see what elements of your review are underdeveloped and may benefit from more focused attention. It’s important to note that not all of the ideas or sources in your mind map would necessarily appear in the final draft.

You can find this information (and more!) in the Writing Center’s online  Writer’s Handbook section on Mind Mapping .

Sit down and write without stopping for a set amount of time (i.e., 5-10 minutes). The goal is to generate a continuous, forward-moving flow of text, to track down all of your thoughts about each source, as if you are thinking on the page. Even if all you can think is, “I don’t know what to write,” or, “Is this important?” write that down and keep on writing. Repeat the same word or phrase over again if you need to. Write in full sentences or in phrases, whatever helps keep your thoughts flowing. Through this process, don’t worry about errors of any kind or gaps in logic. Don’t stop to reread or revise what you wrote. Let your words follow your thought process wherever it takes you.

The purpose of this technique is to open yourself up to the possibilities of your ideas while establishing a record of what those ideas are. Through the unhindered nature of this open process, you are free to stumble into interesting options you might not have previously considered.

You can find this information (and more!) in the Writing Center’s online  Writer’s Handbook section on Freewriting .

Depending on the kind of literature review you’re writing, the overarching structure can look quite different. For the purposes of this introductory micro-course though, let’s walk through a fairly common structure for narrative reviews—that is, reviews that typically feature a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.

Each of these three sections has a specific rhetorical purpose. In other words, they are meant to do certain things:

 Introduction

• Define the general topic, issue, or area
• Point out overall trends, conflicts, and gaps in the published literature
• Establish your point of view and the line of inquiry you’ll be pursuing
• Provide a “road map” of how your review will proceed
• Group studies according to common themes
• Paraphrase study findings and elaborate on their significance according to their relative importance
• Provide strong umbrella sentences, effective transitions, and brief “so what” summaries

 Conclusion

• Summarize major contributions of significant studies to the body of knowledge under review
• Evaluate the current “state of the art” of the knowledge reviewed, noting flaws, gaps, inconsistencies, and areas for future study
• Provide some insight into the relationship between your central topic and a larger area of study

While you’re drafting, try to keep in mind the purpose of each section, and plan on spending a significant amount of time revising your document to ensure that each of these purposes is met.

As you might imagine, drafting and revising the  body  can be particularly labor-intensive! Consider breaking this component of your drafting into smaller, less intimidating tasks. For example:

• Develop categories for the sources you plan to include in your review
• Determine the order in which you’ll discuss your selected sources
• Background information 🡪 specific information
• Areas of consensus 🡪 areas of controversy
• Add section headings
• Include summative sentences at the conclusion of paragraphs (that is, clearly state why the sources addressed are important to your study)

Above all, allow yourself to engage in drafting as an ongoing (and often messy!) process. There is no one “correct” way to draft a literature review, and you may find that using different strategies at different stages will help you make progress toward the final product you’re aiming for.

Remember, writing is a cognitive process, so allow yourself to use the drafting process as a means of deepening and organizing your own thinking about your research. Revision, on the other hand, presents an opportunity to transform your writing from a thinking tool to a communication tool. In other words, revising is a process for considering how your target audience will experience your writing through its relative clarity and cohesion.

Just like drafting, there are multiple revising strategies you might explore, but generally speaking revision is most effective when it moves intentionally from global concerns to local concerns. Global concerns are whole-text issues that impact a reader’s overall experience of your piece. For example: Does it have a clear focus? Is it effectively organized? Local concerns are paragraph- or sentence-specific issues that impact a reader’s experience in particular areas. For example: Are there clear transitions? Could word choice be more precise? Are there proofreading errors?

 Global concerns:

• Focus and relevance
• Unity and cohesion
• Clarity and organization

 Local concerns:

• Paragraph-level (transitions, topic sentences)
• Sentence-level (tone and style, punctuation)
• Word-level (diction, spelling, grammar)

Once you’ve addressed the major global concerns in your draft and considered how your readers might experience navigating the document, you might take a final pass through your language—sentence by sentence—to fine-tune your style.

 Some stylistic considerations:

• Objective tone
• Appropriately qualified language
• Limited quotations
• Appropriate use of active/passive voice
• No leisurely sentence openers

Click on the following headings to learn more about each revision strategy.

Revision Strategies

How this strategy works :

Reverse outlining is a process whereby you take away all of the supporting writing and are left with a paper’s main points or main ideas, sometimes represented by your paper’s topic sentences. Your reverse outline provides a bullet-point view of your literature review’s structure because you are looking only at the main points of the review in its current state.

Reverse outlining allows you to read a condensed version of what you wrote, and provides one good way to examine and produce a successful review. This strategy is particularly useful for large-scale revisions that tackle global concerns. It can help you determine if your literature review meets its goals, discover places to expand on your discussion of sources, and see where readers might be confused by your organization or structure.

You can find this information (and more!) in the Writing Center’s online  Writer’s Handbook section on Reverse Outlining .

Editing for clarity and concision occurs most effectively toward the end of your writing process, after you have addressed any global concerns in the literature review. This requires re-reading each paragraph and each sentence carefully, considering how your language might communicate your ideas most effectively to your readers.

Every writer has quirks and inconsistencies in their writing, so the specific edits you make in your review will look different from other writers’ edits. The UW-Madison Writing Center’s online Writer’s Handbook features a  section on improving your writing style  that can guide you through a variety of editing procedures. For example,  how to use active voice  and  how to avoid vague nouns .

Your literature review will undergo many drafts and revisions along the way, and this might easily lead to some chopped sentences, confusing grammar, and gaps in transitions. Editing—especially with the help of outside readers – can help ensure that you are communicating your ideas as clearly and effectively as possible.

Finally, don’t forget that talking about your writing with knowledgeable, engaged readers is an effective way to gain new perspectives, learn new strategies, and make progress toward your goals.  Lesson 4  provides a list of resources (including outside readers like Writing Center instructors!) to support you in your research and writing.

Tips for Grads: Adding structure and avoiding time wasters in literature reviews

By Emily Azevedo-Casey, PhD student

Picking up from where we left off last week on the  subtle essentials of research paper writing , let’s dive into writing literature reviews. It can be easy to get lost in the ocean of literature and stressful to both synthesize and critique scholarship, especially when you’re short on time. Here are some essential tips to help you avoid time wasters and provide structure so you can be proud of your next literature review.

• Clarify your purpose. Literature reviews generally explore the state of knowledge of a given field or topic. They put ideas in conversation with each other and ask researchers to add their perspective. Consider your purpose as you dive in and get support from your professors, mentors, and advisors for help in choosing a topic.
• Select your criteria. Choose about 10 keywords to search on your favorite literature database . Narrow your search results by adjusting the order of keywords you use and sorting results by time, relevance, and citations. Use citation managers to organize, store, and format your sources.
• Actively read to outline. Read with a pen in hand. Try strategies like annotating as you go and writing critical summaries. Next, organize how the scholarship fits with your topic based on time, events, or themes. This part of the process can be the most fun, so find ways to enjoy it or get creative. Use mindmaps to help develop your argument by connecting similar and different ideas to the main points you want to make. Following that, your outline practically organizes itself!
• Write then edit. If you struggle with constant revising during the early drafting stages like me, try setting specific time aside to revise after you write a complete idea or for a set amount of time. Use resources like The Writing Center or having a friend look at your work. You can also use course rubrics to grade yourself!

There are so many resources out there to help you complete your literature review so do your research and take advantage. This piece drew from the UW-Libraries  mini-course on writing literature reviews in the sciences ,  this article  with samples from The Writing Center’s handbook, and a great  Youtuber Dr. Amina Yonis  who has several videos on the subject.

Tips for Grads is a professional and academic advice column written by graduate students for graduate students at UW­–Madison. It is published in the student newsletter, GradConnections Weekly.

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Library Research Guides - University of Wisconsin Ebling Library

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Click the Find It button or the "Find It at UW Madison" link in most databases to:

• access online full text (when available)
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• request a free pdf of the article or book chapter if full text is not available online (Request a Copy)

The Find It button should automatically appear in select databases if you access them through the library's proxy. For more information on Find It, visit the Find It FAQ page.

Types of Nursing Research

A meta-analysis refers to methods focused on contrasting and combining results from different studies, in the hope of identifying patterns among study results, sources of disagreement among those results, or other interesting relationships that may come to light in the context of multiple studies. Can be either either type of result, primarily compares quantitative research studies.

A Review article is an attempt by one or more writers to sum up the current state of the research on a particular topic. Ideally, the writer searches for everything relevant to the topic, and then sorts it all out into a coherent view of the “state of the art” as it now stands.   Do not confuse this with a “peer-reviewed” article.

Good, but overlooked Databases

• Grants and Funding more... less... The Grants Information Collection, located in Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a collection of print and electronic materials that is open to the public. Collection users do their own research. The Grants Information Collection (GIC) is a cooperating collection of the Foundation Center, an independent national service organization headquartered in New York that is the "nation's leading authority on philanthropy."
• Grants and Funding--Health Sciences Click on the "Grants and Funding" tab". more... less... For additional assistance about locating grants and using the resources, please contact Ann Combs at the Ebling Library.

Google Scholar

The difference between Google and Google Scholar is that Google Scholar focuses on the scholarly literature available on the Internet.  This includes, articles, theses, books, abstracts, U.S. court opinions, and patents, found on the websites of academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and more.  By scholarly literature, Google means publications that are based on the results of research or studies.

Google, on the other hand, has a broader scope, and is looking for resources regardless of where they come from.  Resources in a Google search do not have to be scholarly, and do not have to be based on research.

Try searching for "teenage pregnancy" in Google , then try the same search in Google Scholar .

• What differences do you see in the list of results? 
• If you were doing research on the use of botox in the medical field, which version of Google would you use, and why?

The Wikipedia Problem

Wikipedia can be a good starting point for an overview of a topic or to get research ideas, but it is NOT considered a reliable or scholarly source!

"Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles ."

APA 6th & 7th Cheat Sheets

PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and other EBSCOHost databases can also provide APA citations.  Click on the article and then look to the right and you should see multiple options; one is "Cite".  It will list the correct citation format for APA, AMA, and others.

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Plagiarize : "to steal and pass off (the ideas and words of another) as one's own" or to "present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source." 1 The University of Wisconsin takes very seriously this act of "intellectual burglary," and the penalties are severe.  1. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary , 10th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993), 888.

The UW's Writing Center's page on plagiarism and common writing assignments will help you avoid plagiarism by teaching you how to properly integrate information from published sources into your own writing.  If it's not your idea or words, cite it!

Fora additional individual help writing a paper, check out http://www.writing.wisc.edu/Individual/index.html

Check out the FAQs

If you have a quick question, check the " FAQ " page (Misc tab) to see if it's been answered.  If not, contact Mary the School of Nursing Librarian or, " Ask A Librarian ".

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Another Word

From the writing center at the university of wisconsin-madison.

Reading in the Writing Center, Beyond the One-on-One Session

By angela j. zito –.

With recent publications like the NCTE’s Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom (2018), What is College Reading? of the WAC Clearing House (2017), and Indiana UP’s Critical Reading in Higher Education (2015), it seems that reading in colleges and universities is gaining a good deal of new critical attention.

Good thing. While each of these publications takes a slightly different approach to investigating the teaching and learning of reading in higher education, they all sound the alarm: The teaching and learning of critical reading is not happening very effectively across North American institutions, and there is little scholarship out there to help address that problem.

In her chapter in Deep Reading , “Writing Centers Are Also Reading Centers: How Could They Not Be?”, Muriel Harris sounds off from the realm of writing centers and writing center research, calling for more attention to reading instruction “in the form of scholarship and tutor training methods” to help tutors and student writers better realize the depth of the reading-writing connection (228). “If tutors focus on discussing students’ writing skills without being aware of underlying reading problems,” Harris writes, “tutors are tending to only part of what the students need to learn” (229).

In this post, I want to reflect on a few of Harris’s observations about the kinds of reading instruction that can and should be taking place in our writing centers, and I hope to do so in a way that extends her observations into sites of instruction beyond the one-on-one session and that raises some questions about the challenges of tutoring reading in the writing center.

“Reading to Write”

Harris identifies three provisional categories for approaching the reading-writing connection in tutor training and writing center research:  reading to write , reading while composing , and reading while revising . For the sake of brevity, I’ll consider here only the first of these.

Perhaps the most obvious way in which writing center tutors engage instruction in reading to write is in guiding student writers through a careful reading of the assignment prompt. Even when, in a tutoring session, students do not themselves ask whether their writing thoroughly addresses the assignment (which they often do), the tutor’s training will typically lead them to pursue such reading-based questions— What is the purpose of this piece of writing, and/or what are the course instructor’s expectations, as outlined in the assignment?

Outside the one-on-one tutoring session, the graduate student staff at the UW-Madison Writing Center also address this component of reading-to-write in the instructional workshops we lead. For whatever genre of writing the workshop addresses—literature reviews, resumes, research posters, application essays—students typically are guided through a series of questions to pose to their writing prompt: What is this prompt asking me to do? What keywords should I pay attention to (is it asking me to “analyze,” “synthesize,” “demonstrate,” “explain”)? What goal or purpose does the prompt suggest I should pursue?

For instance, my colleague Mia Alafaireet and I recently co-led a workshop for undergraduate students writing entries for the UW-Madison Liberal Arts Essay Scholarship Competition. We devoted a significant amount of time for workshop participants to discuss the prompt (quoted in full below) with each other, to pose questions about what key terms like “liberal education” and “engaged citizenship” mean—to them and, as suggested through the language of the prompt, to the committee who will be reading their essays.

As a student at UW-Madison, you are learning at levels that are both broad (crossing a wide range of disciplines) and deep (focusing intently on a major or professional program). Liberal education across the arts and sciences challenges students to see and make connections across different domains of knowledge. Using relevant examples and details from your UW-Madison courses and experiences, please tell us how your education has provided you with the tools and skills you need to be an engaged citizen in our increasingly complex world.

Tied in with tutoring students on reading prompts and assignments carefully is helping them to read for genre knowledge. As Harris puts it, “tutors may need to work with those students who, not having a clear genre model in their minds for what they are being asked to write, will be at a loss for appropriate structures or models and flounder, not sure how to proceed” (234). For precisely this reason, our workshops also regularly make use of sample student writing to help participants recognize structural and stylistic features conventional of that particular genre. Mia and I, for instance, were sure to build in time during our Liberal Arts Essay Competition workshop for participants to read the sample essay to themselves and then to discuss its features with each other.

One component of instruction in reading-to-write that we address perhaps least explicitly in our workshops—and, as Harris suggests, in our one-on-one tutoring—is helping students develop strategies for “close” or “deep” reading of print and online texts in such a way as will aid their comprehension of the texts. So often we work with students on “higher order” concerns in their writing without recognizing underlying concerns in their reading . Harris illustrates this for us:

“Sometimes a student’s paper wanders around in search of a focus instead of a coherent discussion of the topic. Or the paper includes large chunks of undigested material copied out of a source. […] Reworking the original draft at this point is counterproductive. To help in these situations, the tutor needs to work with the student on how to read source material with better comprehension. Only after that can they have a productive discussion about how to plan and write the paper.” (230)

I read this and I think,  Of course! Returning to the source material with the student goes hand-in-hand with asking the student to talk through what they’re really driving at in the paper, to articulate what they know and, in effect, what they don’t know— which is a common practice among tutors at our center. (Brad Hughes, Director of the Writing Center at UW-Madison, often jokes that we should be called a “talking center” as much as a “writing center”—a “Reading, Writing, and Talking Center,” if we incorporate Harris’ suggestion in the title of her essay.)

What I have a less clear idea of, though, is how often tutors themselves steer the attention of the session to the student’s reading of the source material, or how confident/comfortable tutors are in doing so… Do students’ source texts tend to be readily available? Does reading instruction of these texts assume or require a greater degree of disciplinary knowledge on the tutor’s part? If the purpose of the student’s writing assignment is to assess their comprehension of a course text, how would the course instructor react to a writing center tutor helping their students improve that comprehension?

As Muriel Harris and others have pointed out, there just isn’t the research out there—yet—to thoroughly address these and other questions.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I hope you’ll consider extending the conversation in the comments section below! Here are a few questions you might consider…

• Where else do you see reading instruction happening in writing centers? Where is reading instruction conspicuously absent?
• If you were to pursue a research question about reading instruction in the writing center, what would that question be? How would you design your study?
• What challenges would you expect to face—in a one-on-one session, in tutor training, in explaining writing center work to faculty—if you were to approach reading instruction much more explicitly in your practice?

Harris, Muriel. “Writing Centers Are Also Reading Centers—How Could They Not Be?”  Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom , edited by Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg, and Sheridan Blau. National Council of Teachers in English 2018, pp. 227-43.

4 Replies to “Reading in the Writing Center, Beyond the One-on-One Session”

Thank you so much for your post! I think reading assignments and writing prompts is an incredibly important and often overlooked component in the college writing and tutoring process. I recently led a workshop for our UW Madison Writing Fellows (our undergraduate writing tutors) on helping students with complex prompts. The Writing Fellows were thankful to have a chance to practice not only modelling but scaffolding prompts with students: first helping them identify the central task and then moving to secondary components. We emphasized that it is important to communicate to students that spending time with the prompt throughout the writing process is anything but remedial. Being able to break down complex prompts is a sophisticated and central skill that they can transfer to other assignments by asking themselves about the central task.

Thanks for sharing this, Calley! That’s such an important point you bring up about how reading prompts carefully – and perhaps spending time talking about reading at all – is “anything but remedial.” I’m curious if Writing Fellows have found that student writers tend to feel that way, or if perhaps they felt that way themselves at some point? What turned their thinking around?

Thanks Angela for this thoughtful post on the importance of reading instruction in our various writing teaching contexts. I’ve noticed recently how students need to work more purposefully on how they are approaching their reading as a part of their writing process. A statewide group of us writing professors from around Oregon (the Oregon Writing & English Advisory Committee) were recently participating in a professional development workshop based on a chapter from NCTE’s Deep Reading. It was a revelation to think about how students are not as engaged in their reading, especially when compared with the many complex and demanding kinds of reading expected from them at the university level. I’ll confess, too, that I have thought much less about the one-to-one coursework conference opportunities to work with students on integrating more effective reading practices into the work they understand as writing: your post has given me much to work with. As I pursue ways to improve the reading aspect of writing instruction, I’ll look forward to examining the other texts referenced. Thanks for bringing these ideas on reading and tutoring to the forefront of our work in an effort to more thoroughly imagine what writing instruction could be for our students.

Christopher J. Syrnyk Former UW-Madison Writing Center TA Associate Professor, Communication Director, Oregon Tech Honors Program

Thanks for this discussion of college-level reading instruction. The questions you raise about writing center instruction apply to classroom instruction as well. For a long time we’ve studied how technology affects writing processes, but we haven’t paid such close attention to how technology affects the reading processes our students regularly engage in and how it can support the reading processes they need to engage in. Reading and listening: the “receptive” modes are essential, and we should try to design exercises and assignments that call students’ attention to these communication modes and extend their skills.

Comments are closed.

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• Conducting a Literature Review in Education and the Behavioral Sciences

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Writing literature reviews : a guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

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Publication Details

• Galvan, Melisa C
• 7th edition
• New York : Taylor and Francis, 2017
• 1 online resource (xix, 288 pages)
• Description based upon print version of record.
• Step 4: Organize Yourself before Reading the Articles
• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Preface; Audiences; Unique Features; New to This Edition; Ancillaries; Notes to the Instructor; Special Acknowledgment; Acknowledgments; Notes; Part I: Managing the Literature Search; 1 Writing Reviews of Academic Literature: An Overview; An Introduction to Reviewing Primary Sources; Empirical Research Reports; Theoretical Articles; Literature Review Articles; Anecdotal Reports; Reports on Professional Practices and Standards; The Writing Process; Finding Your 'Writer's Voice': Writing for a Specific Purpose
• Writing a Literature Review as a Term Paper for a ClassWriting a Literature Review Chapter for a Thesis or Dissertation; Writing a Literature Review for a Research Article; The Parts of this Text; Managing the Literature Search-Part I; Analyzing the Relevant Literature-Part II; Writing the First Draft of Your Literature Review-Part III; Editing and Preparing the Final Draft of Your Review-Part IV; Activities for Chapter 1; Notes; 2 Learn to Navigate the Electronic Resources in Your University's Library; Step 1: Formalize Your Institutional Affiliation with Your University Library
• Step 2: Set Up Your Online Access Credentials and/or Proxy ServerStep 3: Inquire about University Library Research Workshops; Step 4: Select a Search Engine that Best Suits Your Needs; Step 5: Familiarize Yourself with How Online Databases Function; Step 6: Experiment with the "Advanced Search" Feature; Step 7: Identify an Array of Subject Keywords to Locate Your Sources; Step 8: Learn How You Can Access the Articles You Choose; Step 9: Identify Additional Databases that May Be Useful for Your Field of Study; Step 10: Repeat the Search Procedures with Other Databases; Activities for Chapter 2
• Note3 Selecting a Topic for Your Review; Step 1: Define Your General Topic; Step 2: Familiarize Yourself with the Basic Organization of Your Selected Online Database; Step 3: Begin Your Search with a General Keyword, then Limit the Output; Step 4: Identify Narrower Topic Areas If Your Initial List of Search Results Is Too Long; Step 5: Increase the Size of Your Reference List, If Necessary; Step 6: Consider Searching for Unpublished Studies; Step 7: Start with the Most Current Research, and Work Backward; Step 8: Search for Theoretical Articles on Your Topic; Step 9: Look for Review Articles
• Step 10: Identify the Landmark or Classic Studies and TheoristsStep 11: Assemble the Collection of Sources You Plan to Include in Your Review; Step 12: Write the First Draft of Your Topic Statement; Step 13: Redefine Your Topic More Narrowly; Step 14: Ask for Feedback from Your Instructor or Advisor; Activities for Chapter 3; Notes; 4 Organizing Yourself to Begin the Selection of Relevant Titles; Step 1: Scan the Articles to Get an Overview of Each One; Step 2: Based on Your Prereading of the Articles, Group Them by Category; Step 3: Conduct a More Focused Literature Search if Gaps Appear

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Literature review description.

1. Introduction

Not to be confused with a book review, a  literature review  surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

2. Components

Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:

• Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature

Literature reviews should comprise the following elements:

• An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review
• Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative theses entirely)
• Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research

In assessing each piece, consideration should be given to:

• Provenance—What are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence (e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings)?
• Objectivity—Is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness—Which of the author's theses are most/least convincing?
• Value—Are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

3. Definition and Use/Purpose

A literature review may constitute an essential chapter of a thesis or dissertation, or may be a self-contained review of writings on a subject. In either case, its purpose is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the subject under review
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration
• Identify new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in, previous research
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort
• Point the way forward for further research
• Place one's original work (in the case of theses or dissertations) in the context of existing literature

The literature review itself, however, does not present new  primary  scholarship.

4. Examples of Literature Reviews

An annotated example of a literature review may be found:

https://writingcenter.ashford.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Sample%20Literature%20Review_0.pdf

Find a published, peer-reviewed literature review by searching Search @UW for the following:

Raheel, H., Karim, M. S., Saleem, S., & Bharwani, S. (2012). Information and Communication Technology Use and Economic Growth.  Plos ONE, 7 (11), 1-7.

5. For more information:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center. (2009).  Writer's Handbook: Common Writing Assignments: Review of Literature . Madison, Wisconsin: Author. Retrieved 20th of February 2020 from the World Wide Web: https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/reviewofliterature/

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UMGC Effective Writing Center How to Write a Literature Review (in 30 Minutes or Less)

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The video below demonstrates a 5-step method for writing a literature review. It assumes that the research for it is done and has produced an annotated bibliography: a list of works on the topic that have been read and summarized. Keep in mind that in this sample literature review; only 7 sources are used. Most literature reviews require more sources.

How to Write a Literature Review in 30 Minutes or Less

How to Write a Literature Review in 30 Minutes or Less" breaks down this academic assignment into 5 easy steps.

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