Tips on How to Write Literature Review for Dissertation

A dissertation is the most complex academic writing any student will write for a degree. It requires consulting different literature papers to grasp the concept of a topic. Furthermore, you need knowledge of current knowledge, previous research works, and knowledge gap in the subject to conduct a dissertation.

Moreover, a literature review is an essential part of any academic writing. If you’re writing one from scratch, you have to be ready to do a great deal of work. Keep reading for more on writing a dissertation literature review.

Basic Rules for Writing Dissertation Literature Review

Reviewing a literature requires that you have sufficient knowledge about the literature, but that’s not all. To write a good literature review dissertation, you will want to follow these rules:

Choose an interesting topic for your dissertation; it should interest you, be important, and be a well-defined issue. For instance, you want an important topic to be interested in reading and reference it in their works. Also, there’ll be enough information on the subject.
Search and re-search whatever literature you choose to review. As you do, you want to keep track of your search items, a list of papers without easy access, use paper management, and outsource previously-written sample dissertation literature review online.
Keep your pen and notes close by as you research; take notes as you research each literature source.
Decide if you’re going full-review or mini-review; some journals favor short reviews focusing on recent years, with limited citations and number of words.
Avoid including too many materials and having your review do too many things at a time.

Steps Involved in Writing a Literature Review for a Dissertation

You need a dissertation literature review to situate your study with existing knowledge. It helps you familiarize yourself with the topic and position yourself with other researchers, among other things. Below are the steps involved in writing a literature review for a dissertation:

Step 1: Search

Before searching for literature, you need to choose a topic. Writing a dissertation literature review requires that you search for works of literature related to your research questions. This kind of review requires answering research questions with original data. Therefore, you will need to search a wide range of works of literature in line with your study. As you do, search for keywords and relevant sources for your dissertation.

Step 2: Evaluate Sources

You may find several resources with answers to your research questions. However, since you cannot use every one of them, you will have to evaluate them and choose the most relevant. Whatever source you settle for, you want to ensure they are credible.

Step 3: Identify Connections

The next step is to identify gaps, debates, and themes between the sources you’ve searched and read. This practice helps you organize your argument and structure. It may also help you see if your research work contributes to existing knowledge.

Step 4: Outline

Outline your literature review body; good knowledge of the strategies for this is essential. The outline of your literature review body depends on how long the review itself is. For example, it can be chronological; this is the simplest strategy. On the other hand, you can outline it theoretically; this involves using your literature review to discuss theories, models and define key concepts.

Step 5: Write

Start writing your literature review body following the introduction-body-conclusion pattern. Your introduction states clearly the purpose of the review, the body analyzes both researchers’ and your thoughts (where applicable), and the conclusion summarizes the whole review.