A literature review is a writing style that makes the reader understands a particular point or a topic in a field. This style of writing includes thesis, assignments, introductory, reports case writings and much more.

Literature reviews are based on a particular research. This research is given a certain description according to the factual details of your research. These descriptions are written in a form of summaries that have a critical discussion over the major points of your research. These summaries also contain arguments and analysis relevant to your research.

A perfect and a professional literature review is the one that discusses factual details, controversies, arguments, raises questions, and identifies areas that encourage for further research.

Now let’s move to understanding the basics of writing a literature review.

What a literature review should have?

According to the guidelines of La Trobe University, a literature review should have these basic things:

1- Comparison and contrast of the views of different authors.

2- Discussion and views of group authors who come to similar conclusions.

3- Have a brief discussion on different methodologies of the research.

4- Include necessary and relevant examples.

5- Pinpoint the areas where the author has discussed, differentiated  or argumentative views.

6- Highlight the gaps in the research.

7- Compare your research with the literature review.

8- Be limited and precise to the specific area of discussion.

9- Discuss your study in a historical perspective.

10- Do not duplicate the content. Try to summarize it in your own words with factual understanding.

11- To evaluate promising research.

12- To relate your findings to previous knowledge and suggest future research.

According to writing.utoronto.ca, a literature review must have the following structure:

Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas

Information seeking

The ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books.

Critical appraisal

The ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.

A literature review must do these things

1- Be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing

2- Synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known

3- Identify areas of controversy in the literature

4- Formulate questions that need further research

Every literature review has a particular style of writing and a structure. This structure depends on your thesis and research area.

Best literature reviews are those that describe general opinions of different authors. As a writer, you must understand the description of different authors on the relevant topic you have chosen. To make your literature review strong, start the review by explaining the point of view of one author, then move on to another and so on.

Try to include more and more controversial and highlighted discussions of the authors instead of including unnecessary details. Maintain a pace of questions and claims in your review.

Another important point of writing a literature review is to include connecting words or phrases that could hold your arguments from one author to another. For example, however, nevertheless, on the other hand, etc.

Moving on to the last part of your literature review, it should carry a hypothesis, a point of discussion and a claim that summarizes your research understanding in the end.

By following the above-mentioned points, any writer would be able to note down the best and meaningful literature review for the readers that could be helpful for future research as well.

DISCLAIMER: All the above images have been taken from Google as references. 

Writing does not carry just one single style but it can be scripted in many different styles including story writings, argumentative writings, essays, journals, diaries and much more.

These particular writing styles not only differentiate between the genres but it also explains a need and understanding for that writing style.

There are four main types of writing styles:

1- Expository

2-Persuasive

3- Narrative

4- Descriptive

1- Expository Writing

Illuminate and expose that means to describe something with complete details and description is known as expository writing.

This writing style includes essays, newspaper, magazine articles, Instruction manuals, and other similar text styles.

This style tends to explain a subject or a topic with complete factual and opinionated details. For example, if you are writing about a particular culture like hip-hop culture; you have to start your blog by describing the origin of that culture, leading it to a descriptive form of how, what, when, where and which way the culture is celebrated, traditionalized and understood within the society.

2- Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing also known as notification writing is a form, where a writer persuades a reader towards a certain point. Here a writer tends to force a reader to think his way.

Here a writer needs to be vigilant and smart in selecting words to persuade readers to his opinion. If the word is not too strong and meaningful for your reader, it is possible that he may lose some interest.

Persuasive writing is helpful for children and students to formulate their own opinion and subjection towards a certain point. This helps them to do reasoning and develop their own sense of understanding for things and situation around them.

Nowadays media, television and Internet sources have a very strong influence on people. Learning persuasive writing and using these mediums to explains their understanding can bring in a persuasive change within the society as well.

3- Narrative Writing

Telling a story, a convention, a memorable event or a happening and describing a plot is known as Narrative writing. This writing style is always written in the form of a first person. i.e. using ‘I’.

In this form, the writer explains the details of any happening or memorable event. This style asks the writer to cover every specific detail of what, why and how it happened and what happened next.

It is the simplest form of writing where you share your memories and experiences in detail. Here it is necessary for a writer to narrate his writing experience in a form of a story, where sensory details, feelings, and charms become essentials points to cover.

This style is executed from a particular point of view with details and supportive experiences. This style often uses dialogues and conversation storytelling tactics.

4- Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing tends to explain a person, place, experience, object or a thing in complete detail. It asks the writer to explain a scenario with complete details making it interesting for readers.

Descriptive writing is simply describing what you observe. Here you can define your reasons and opinions too. Make sure to create a vivid experience for your readers through this style of writing. Here, you have to make your readers realize the reason, sound essence, charm, and experience behind your writing. This is how you can attain the best response from your readers.

 

DISCLAIMER: All the above pictures have been taken from Google as references. 

“To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perspective vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strengths.”

Lawrence Clark Powell

Before discussing the basics and importance of the literature review, let’s understand the meaning of a literature review?

A literature review is a discussion of a particular subject or an area. This area is not specifically described from the pages of books and novels but is also includes the description of research papers, organizational bundles, government records and  other such related things from which you can collect ample amount of data and information.

A literature review follows a fixed organizational pattern that has a hypothesis and a synthesis in its summary. The summary highlights the necessary information from the detailed panel of research and writing.

People usually consider academic writing and literature review as similar writing styles but in reality, both of these writing styles are completely different.

An academic paper is written to create a new argument in the discussion. It defines your personal opinion towards a certain subject of a specification. On the contrary, a literature review is a simple summarization and description of the information you read in the novel or any research paper.

Now let’s move on to understanding the importance of writing a literature review.

If you are working on a professional level, you are very well known about the busy criteria of people around and even yourself.

Writing a summarization of novels in a form of a literature review basically defines the plot of what are about to read or altogether describes the interest of the reader. Moreover, a literature review also describes a writer’s creditability towards his or her work. It also gives comprehensive knowledge of the subject that has been described in detail.

Who writes Literature Reviews?

Writing literature reviews is not a task for everyone. People belonging to the fields of humanities sciences, social sciences and also medical related field are subjected to write literature reviews.

For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read. For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way. (Example is taken from NCBI blog)

A literature review is a vast topic that includes plenty of insights, preliminary work, strategies for writing, organizational framework, composition, revision and consultation reviews. After leading through all these specifications, a writer can come up with a professional and worthy literature review.

We will be continuing our next blog with the insights, preliminary work and strategies of writing a literature review. Till then, stay tuned to us!

DISCLAIMER: All the above pictures have been taken from Google as references.

Assignments and term papers are the most common requirements of your study time.

When you are working for your term papers you are not expecting a C grade in return. We all know it means a lot to you, as most of the times it consists the highest marks and grades in the class. So grabbing an A score in your term paper is a must!

Today we will be explaining you the basics of writing an excellent term paper.

Be creative while modeling your topic

Either you have to choose the topic or you have been given a topic you need to be creative in both ways. Think out of the box and choose that topic in which you can elaborate more and present your hypothesis and ideas.

Don’t choose the topics that close your thoughts in a box. This way your term paper will not lead you to a strong argument you were thinking of present.

Once you have chosen the topic collect reviews ideas comments and thoughts about the topic from other people. This is how you can discuss the topic in your term paper with more factual details.

Adventure your research

Consider the research your experience of any adventure rather than considering it a hectic job to get done with.

When you start writing a term paper you need to focus on the ideas and concepts to collect the factual details regarding the topic. Research as much as you can. Be open to new idea. Look forward to solving old problems in new and innovative ways.

While researching, make use of both primary (original text, documents, interviews) and secondary platforms (idea sharing, discussions, notes, perceptions).

Write a strong thesis statement

Your thesis statement serves as the most important part of your term paper. Make sure the thesis statement very well describes the niche of your essay and body paragraphs. It should have the base of the argument and message you are going to carry throughout you term paper in the body paragraphs.

Outline your ideas

Some people don’t consider outlining ideas an important part of writing a term paper.

When you outline your ideas, you get a clear point of view of what you are going to write in the body paragraphs.

It saves you from chaos! By outlining ideas you know which point should be noted and discussed first and which point should be discussed last.

Write an easy to understand introduction

Your introduction carries the pillar of your essay. Here you have to describe the true meaning of your argument along with thesis statement and your topic. So, avoid using complex sentences and vocabulary use in the introductory paragraph. Make is as easy as possible.

You can also start this paragraph by writing a quote or an interview dialogue that suits your topic.

Explain the rest in the body paragraphs and convince the reader

Choose as many paragraphs you want to, but make sure that your term paper ends in the given limit. Here you are free to write and discuss the related arguments and ideas you have outlined earlier. To make it stronger, try discussing each idea with an example in the end. This way, you will be able to convince your reader through factual details.

Conclusion

Wrap it up! Leave a certain clincher in the ending paragraph so that your reader is emphasized to think about that.

You can also conclude the ending paragraph by restating your thesis statement and adding a certain point of idea and perception in it.

DISCLAIMER: All these pictures have been taken from Google as examples. 

Essay writing for students is an overwhelming task, not only because it is a long project but also because it includes many prominent steps which need to be followed with particularity.

Today we have gathered some tips and strategies to make you understand the niche of writing a professional essay.

1-    Pick or Follow a topic

Following the given topics makes you research the information, but if you have an option of picking up a certain topic of your own choice, make sure that the particular topic interest you the most.

Select the topic according to the particularity of your interest. First, think either the purpose of your essay is to persuade, educate, or inform then select the topic according to your passion and according to your knowledge.

2-    Jot down your idea in a rough form

The most important part of essay writing is to lay a foundation at first and then start writing. Every writer is supposed to jot down some important ideas in a rough form first that connects to the main lead of your essay.

This can be done by either drawing out a cloud formation on a rough page, writing the title in the middle of the cloud and stretching out some lines that quote smaller ideas for your essay or you can simply write the ideas down in a bullet form.

3-    A strong thesis statement

After jotting down the main ideas of your essay write up, prepare a thesis statement. A thesis statement is made up of two parts

• Your title
• Brief characteristics of your title

4-    Introductory Paragraph

An introductory paragraph should be an attention grabber. For it, you can either use unique lines, quotes, dialogues and any other prominent information that connects with your thesis statement.

5-    Body structure of your essay

In this part of your essay, you start describing, explaining and arguing about the main ideas you had jotted down earlier. Each idea is explained in different paragraphs, starting with an introductory sentence and then leading to the supportive sentence and then example.

6-    Conclusion

The ending should be precise. You should be able to end your essay with five or six strong lines that sum up all your ideas, arguments and notes. Here you can also give you own personal comment and view in regard to the topic.

7-    Re-check your essay

You don’t get to figure out any mistake while you are writing your essay. So, it is very necessary for you to re-check and re-read your essay again to make sure of any mistakes, either grammatically or of writing structure.

Following these strategies will not only help a writer to quote down a professional essay but it will also lead to a successful experience of writing and learning as well.