Jessica Liu: Hi, I'm Jessica from Scribbr, and you made it to the last step. All the preliminary work is now done and you're ready to write.
The structure of the literature review is similar to other academic texts, with an introduction, body, and conclusion. Generally speaking, the introduction of your literature review should clearly state the focus and purpose of the literature review. If you're writing a literature review for your research paper or dissertation, restate your research question and give a brief overview of what you'll discuss. You can emphasize the timeliness of the topic, so something like, "Many recent studies have focused on the problem of X," or highlight a gap in the literature, like, "While there has been much research on X, few researchers have taken Y into consideration." If you're writing a standalone paper, give some background on the topic and its importance, discuss the scope of the literature you will review. For example, the time period of your sources and state your objective. What new insight will you draw from the literature?
For the body of your literature review, you can divide it into subsections and use a subheading for each theme, time period or methodological approach. Keep these four tips in mind as you write, summarize and synthesize, analyze and interpret, critically evaluate, use well-structured paragraphs. I'll show you how to use these four tips with an example paragraph. Feel free to pause if you need more time to read through it.
Tip number one, summarize and synthesize the information. Summarizing means giving an overview of the main points of a source, but it's also important to synthesize. That means combining several sources to make an overall point, showing the similarities and differences between them. In this paragraph, you can see how different studies are pieced together to convey a point. We first summarized the theory of Perloff (2014). Then we synthesized several studies, as highlighted here, that had a similar focus and findings, illustrating a clear trend in the field.
Tip number two, analyze and interpret the research. It's important to add your own interpretation and discuss the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole. From this sentence, we analyzed several studies and concluded that the visual and interactive aspects of social media are the most important factor in body image issues.
Tip number three, critically evaluate your sources to identify and discuss strengths and weaknesses. Take a look at this sentence, this is a critical evaluation of the literature. You contributed your own opinion on how new technology is changing the role of media in body image.
Tip number four, write in well-structured paragraphs. To make sure your sentences and paragraphs are cohesive, use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts. If you need help with writing topic sentences, check out this video.
Now, for the final tip, before you go ahead and submit your paper, make sure to proofread and revise it. Apart from typos, you should also pay attention to overuse of passive voice, repetitive phrasing, informal and subjective language, and much more. Boo, sound scary? Don't worry. Scribbr has a team of academic editors who can proofread your literature review for you, click here.Finally, for the conclusion, some of the main takeaway of your literature review. If it's a part of your dissertation, here you should clearly show how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge. If it's a standalone paper, you can summarize the major findings and implications of the literature and make suggestions for future research.
Best of luck on your journey to write a good literature review, make sure to drop a like and sub-Scribbr. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you soon.