Literature reviews help researchers position their work within a larger scholarly conversation, so that readers can understand how a research project or argument responds to work that come before it. Literature reviews are often composed as parts of larger projects that serve a variety of functions – as part of a research proposal, as an overview of best practices recommended by experts, in response to a community-based issue or need, as a part of a longer publication or as a standalone meta-review. In fact, less traditionally formal versions of literature reviews are used ubiquitously to frame conversations and provide readers with appropriate context.
In general though, writers use literature reviews to synthesize information, compare and contrast ideas, and clearly describe relationships between well-cited texts so that readers get a sense of a broader conversation and its relevance to a specific issue or topic within a field, in order to contextualize a claim/argument. These passages in scholarly articles, books, research proposals, conference presentations, etc. help to show how experts have approached a research problem or question, what has already been said about it, where contradictions or gaps occur, and what still needs to be learned about a topic, and what the author is claiming or contributing to the conversation. To facilitate this work, literature reviews are organized topically with frequent citations, dense prose, and signposting to help readers navigate both conceptual and structural complexity.
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Assignment Prompt:
For this assignment, you will continue your work on the research question you developed (and perhaps revised) for Project 2. For most, you will begin by presenting a brief introduction of the major historical or contextual developments contributing to this topic in your chosen discourse community, and then spend the rest of the Literature Review mapping out the contemporary scholarly work being done on the topic.
By the time you begin working on drafting your literature review, you will have already done most of the significant work required for this project. You will have identified and revised research questions, identified initial texts and created a working bibliography, and crafted Cornell notes and a Synthesis Map to help you pull together and organize your sources and identify gaps, questions, problems, or tensions in the scholarly conversation.
To develop a revised, literature review essay, we will continue to move through several smaller, yet still formal scaffolding steps:
read sample literature reviews and conduct genre analysis (week 8)
reflect on your one-on-one conference and do some planning reflection (week 9)
submitting a draft for peer review (week 11), and
using that peer and teacher feedback to work through paragraph- and sentence-level revision and to craft the literature review for a specific audience and purpose (week 12).
In your literature review essay, you will follow the standard genre conventions uncovered during our early genre analyses. At minimum, your review should include a discussion of the central topic you are investigating and at least two sub-topics that help you focus your research.
We will review examples of published literature reviews to analyze how writers organize discussions of a major topic and then help readers navigate through a set of related sub-topics. We will also discuss how to frame sources such that readers understand the broader conversation about these topics and sub-topics, and how to establish a scholarly niche for yourself–a corner of the conversation you would be interested in entering as a professional.
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Regardless of your organizational scheme, you should follow the suggested outline below:
Introduction (1-2 pages)
One (or so) in which you establish the importance of the topic to the fields present work, and
One (or so) in which you describe why this topic is significant or important to your claim/argument, specifically, to examine. Look at your developing work in P1 and P2 for help with drafting this section.
In the introduction of your literature review, you will spend at least 1 paragraph giving your readers the necessary background and contextual information about the topic you are reading about (why is this an important or interesting topic, in this field, now?), as well as establishing your works primary focus and purpose.
Body (8+ pages)
Structurally, you will use subheadings and transition sentences to further signpost shifts in sub-topics for your reader.
Logically, you will need to order your paragraphs in such a way that you move from broader definitions and discussions of the topic toward demonstrating the pattern, history, problem, or niche you emphasized in the introduction.
You will also demonstrate sentence-level moves that are integral to showing relationships between source material, including topic sentences, signal phrases, transition words and phrases, and conjunctions.
The body of your paper will begin with a short signposting paragraph describing the focus and organization of your review of the literature.
From there, you will develop topic paragraphs–focused with well crafted topic sentences–in which you synthesize the scholarship you have been reading, including citations throughout these paragraphs.
You will need to think carefully about organization in this section of the paper.
Conclusion (1-2 pages)
This is a persuasive moment–remember the audience you identified in P2, and think about how you want to present your scholarly and professional self to that audience.
In your conclusion, you will summarize the major themes presented in the literature review and reiterate the implications of the pattern, history, problem, or niche you have showcased through your review.
Then, you will offer a final assertive paragraph that explain why more research in this area is needed, and your next steps as a scholar [check out this infographic for other tips for conclusions:]conclusions infographic
Reflection
Reflect in writing on your writing process for this academic genre, as well as your projects major revisions based on peer and instructor feedback,
Reflect on your attention to the genre features of the literature review (especially as you demonstrate discursive and organizational patterns evidenced in your disciplinary examples),
Reflect on what, specifically, this project has prepared you TO DO next, in your research/professional trajectory, having completed this project.
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Minimum Requirements:
A 10-15 page, double-spaced review of literature (not including works cited/references) that covers the basic sections described above.
A complete and correctly formatted bibliography of sources
Integration of headings and subheadings to mark sections.
Use of 10-12 scholarly sources.
Consistent citation and design formatting throughout (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
1-page, single-spaced reflective memo
Learning Outcomes:
Read: Analyze genres from the students discipline or profession, including their associated discourse community, audience(s), rhetorical situations, purposes, and strategies.
Write: Use a flexible writing process and varied technologies to produce texts that address the expectations of the students disciplinary or professional discourse community in terms of claims, evidence, organization, format, style, rhetorical situation, strategies, and effects by drawing on an explicit understanding of the genre(s) being composed.
Research: Write research genres, use research methods, and conduct primary and secondary research to produce an extended research project relevant to the student’s discipline or profession.
Reflect: Use reflective writing to describe developing knowledge about writing (especially writing in ones discipline or profession) and about oneself as a writer (including ones ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate ones writing process and texts).
Rubric:
Expectations
What works/needs work?
1-2 page introduction, including significance of topic for the field, needed contextual information, and personal professional purpose for researching the topic.
8+ page literature review developing one major topic and at least two sub-topics.
Signposting, use of heading and subheadings, focused paragraphs, and logical order in the body of the paper.
Sentence-level moves and features integral to the essential genre of the literature review [e.g. signal phrases, appropriate conjunctions and transitional phrases, etc.]
A conclusion that summarizes the themes presented in the literature review and a persuasive, reflective paragraph on scholarly/professional significance.
Consistent and correct formatting throughout (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
250-word reflection detailing revision decisions, attention to genre features of literature reviews, and projecting preparation for future research, writing or presentation tasks.