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How To Write A Critical Literature Review

This document provides guidance on writing the critical literature review section of an academic paper. It explains that a literature review must demonstrate the author's research, understanding of the relevant discourse, critical assessment of sources, and identification of a gap in existing literature. It recommends introducing the topic, discussing sources individually in a flowing text while contextualizing, summarizing arguments and providing critical analysis of each work, and concluding by relating the paper to prior literature and identifying its contribution. The review should be concise, typically 2-3 paragraphs, and follow disciplinary conventions for search methods, structure, and source selection. Students commonly mistake a literature review for a source list, when critical analysis of each source is required.

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Andrea Orza
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94 views

How To Write A Critical Literature Review

This document provides guidance on writing the critical literature review section of an academic paper. It explains that a literature review must demonstrate the author's research, understanding of the relevant discourse, critical assessment of sources, and identification of a gap in existing literature. It recommends introducing the topic, discussing sources individually in a flowing text while contextualizing, summarizing arguments and providing critical analysis of each work, and concluding by relating the paper to prior literature and identifying its contribution. The review should be concise, typically 2-3 paragraphs, and follow disciplinary conventions for search methods, structure, and source selection. Students commonly mistake a literature review for a source list, when critical analysis of each source is required.

Uploaded by

Andrea Orza
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to Write a Critical Literature Review Section

LUC/Brill-Nijhoff Writing Centre

The literature review is one of the most important genres in academic writing and comes in a
number of guises. It can be a separate text (at the time of writing, it is even possible to do a
Literature Review as a Capstone at LUC) but the most common type of literature review at LUC
is a section of your research paper.

Every discipline has different conventions when it comes to literature reviews but they do have a
number of things in common. They all need to demonstrate:
- that you have done your research
- that you understand the discourse your paper is part of
- that you have assessed your sources critically
- that you have read them critically and understand them well
- and that there is a gap in the literature that justifies your research question and research

In the science disciplines, you are also expected to include your methodology, for instance by
describing how you found your sources (you need to list your key words and database as well as
your inclusion and exclusion criteria) and how you assessed them - in the sciences, it is important
that your search follows a standardized method and that the literature review is structured and
reproducible.

Once you start your major, you will learn the specific conventions for the literature review
section of your chosen field. In Academic Writing, you are asked to write two literature review
sections. The first is Building Block 2 and is intended not only as practice for the second one,
the literature review section in your final research paper, but also to teach you how useful it can
be to create a preliminary literature review during your research. It is a way for you to reflect on
the usefulness of the text for your project, to process your reading in a more coherent and
focused manner and to make sure that you will not forget the key points of texts that are relevant
to your research.

The literature review in your final paper is the one most commonly found in undergraduate work
and in principle it is a brief (usually no more than two or three paragraphs, depending on the
length of your paper) section that combines characteristics of the survey, summary and critical
analysis. In the Humanities, this section of the paper is given after the BIB as the reader needs to
be able to understand your subject and place in in your discussion. If very little has been written
about your specific subject, you can also focus your literature review on a wider discourse that
your subject is part of or the conceptual discourse that is key to your argumentation – however,
do realize that if your subject has been written about before in an academic study, you should
include this source.

The biggest mistake students make in their literature review sections, is to just provide a list of
the sources that are relevant to their paper. Please do not do this: you need to contextualize the
source (who wrote it, when was it written, does it have a particular agenda or approach),
summarize the arguments relating to your specific subject and then assess that argument – this is
the critical part and it is crucial to an effective literature review section. Does the author prove
his or her points? Is the argumentation convincing? What evidence does the author give? Is there
anything that he or she does not mention? How does it relate to other sources and the general
discourse of your subject? Do note that you have to give evidence for your assessment: state and
prove, for instance by giving very short but precise paraphrases and quoting– sparingly - relevant
parts.

There are several ways to organize a literature review section – every discipline has its own rules
for this. However, the most basic one starts with a brief introduction (a couple of sentences) that
gives a general survey of academic studies on your subject – please make this as precise as you
can. If your paper is about a work by Picasso, you do not give a survey of the whole of 20th-
century European painting: you should write about discussions of your subject or the particular
aspect of Picasso’s work that you will focus on. If very little has been published on your
specialist subject, you can use that in your introduction: ‘Very little has been published about this
particular sketch…’.

After your introduction, the easiest way is to list the sources one by one and you can choose to
do this chronologically or take a more thematic approach. Whichever you choose, make sure that
it is a flowing text rather than a list and try to be as clear and concise as you can. Introduce the
work (please mention the author’s full name, the full title of the work and its year of publication),
summarize the argument(s) relating to your subject and then assess it critically. As for your
selection of the sources, if there is an older but still very authoritative text on your subject, do
include this but try to focus on recent work as this will give a more precise and current overview
of the current academic discourse you are entering.

You conclude your literature review section with a brief discussion of how your paper relates to
the sources you have just presented: try to prove that there is a gap that you will discuss or an
element that you will shed new light on. This is crucial as you need to convey the relevance of
your paper and how it contributes to the discourse.

Finally, don’t forget to revise your text. Again, it needs to be a flowing text with a solid ‘state and
prove’ structure and you need to make sure that you have spelled the names of the authors and
titles of the work correctly and have given correct page references. Also, please do not forget to
include all the publications you discuss in your bibliography.

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