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Chapter 14 (Wallwork)

Review of the Literature

What key skills are needed when writing a Review of the Literature?

- Right amount of literature regarding the sequence of events leading up to the current

situation.

- Usefulness of the literature

o Systematically elaborate the achievements and limitations of other studies

o Relate your new facts and data to these studies

- Length varies

How should I structure my review of the literature?

- What are the seminal works on my topic? Do I need to mention these?

- What progress has been made since these seminal works?

- What are the most relevant recent works? What is the best order to mention these

works?

- What are the achievements and limitations of these recent works?

- What gap do these limitations reveal?

- How does my work intend to fill this gap?

How should I begin my literature review? How can I structure it to show progress through the

years?

- First sentence introduces the main topic.

- Support from the literature.

- Mini summary

- Introduction to the next topic. And so on.

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What is the clearest way to refer to the authors? Should I focus on the authors or their ideas?

- Blinco (1992) found…

- Blinco (1992, p. 45) said, “The Japanese kids are smarter…”

What tenses should I use?

- Present (Laws, theorems, definitions, proofs, lemmas etc.).

- Present Perfect (Ongoing research).

- Past Simple

o The year of publication is stated within the main sentence (i.e., not just in

brackets). Example: In 1992, Bianco found…

o Approaches and Methods that have been probably been abandoned.

o The exact date when something was written (Proved).

How can I reduce the amount I write when reporting the literature?

Original Revised

Long sentences = poor readability

In all languages

Long sentences…Roman period

Author-centeredness

How can I talk about limitations of previous work and the novelty of my work in a constructive

and diplomatic way?

Never done before:

- As far as we know, there are no studies on…

Others’ limitations:

- Generally speaking patients’ perceptions are seldom considered.

Chapter 8 and 9 for more information about how to state contributions and limitations.

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Summary: How can I assess the quality of my literature review?

- Have I mentioned only what my readers specifically need to know and what I will

subsequently refer to the Discussion?

- Are the papers I have mentioned in a logical order? Is it clear why have I chosen

these papers and no others?

- Have I selected a disproportionate number of papers from my own country?

- Have I removed any redundancies when reporting the literature?

- Have I used tenses correctly?