Thursday 28 February 2013

How To Write Dissertation Literature Review

Students are no stranger to that experience: of having to finish writing and seeing the written piece in its finality and realising how horrible it looks.  Some of these students are lucky enough to be able to revise; the rest are the unfortunate ones.

This may be less traumatic with essays, but with a literature review, oh no...

To avoid any of these scenes, check for these methodologies:

1. Start with a drafted outline for that discourse chapter.  Stick to a realistic outline, one that you’ll willingly follow.  

2. Infuse with your outline, the possible research resources you will have to use.  Opt on the most relevant research points.

3. Start the search for your dissertation literature review’s resources via those set in the outline.  At this rate, begin to be open for research points that aren’t found in the outline; however, prioritise those you listed, unless later deemed unnecessary.

4. List details in accord to your first choices.  If you are certain about a research, list its complete details, or create a drafted bibliography.  For the rest, it would be sufficient to put the book number (if it’s a book) together with the page number or the link (if it’s accessed online).          

5. After your first research, integrate your collected research resources with the outline.  As you put flesh in that naked framework referred to as outline, you are inevitably checking for yourself the relevance of the collected material.

6. Continue to do research to fill-in missing places of your dissertation literature review outline.  You will have to repeat this research and outline-checking until you got all places occupied.

7. Finally, with the completed research, start to actually write the chapter’s draft.  Put your claims and arguments in harmonic mix with your research.  Every now and then, you will find a research material insufficient, or unnecessary in the piece; don’t take twice uprooting it.  

The last and consistent imperative for all discourse chapters is to incessantly revise.  In other words, don’t just proofread and revise this dissertation literature review chapter ; do it for every chapter, to lessen major improvement-works.