A literature review essay is not necessarily just a review of an old classic or a summary of a well-known and well-read novel. A literature review may consist of almost anything that has been published like dissertations, scholarly articles, and even government pamphlets dealing with some remote area policies or maybe even some governing issues. A literature review, once the topic is chosen, will necessarily survey the available written articles that are relevant to the issue and will give an overview of published information on that particular topic. So the question that now arises is, how to write a literature review.
Literary essay structure
The opening sentence is absolutely essential for any literature review essay. The opening sentence should be intelligible, coherent and comprehensible. It should give the reader a feel of what kind of review the writer is going to write. All the facts that follow the first sentence should be well arranged, and should give the reader a good understanding of what kind of study it will be.
The next sentence should introduce the main subject of the literature review. It should explain the main character, the conflict in the story, the outcome of the story, the topic that the writer will concentrate on in this literature review, the theme of the article, the difficulty that is involved in the specific research, and the expected answer to the question.
The next sentence should contain the answer to the last sentence. It should explain why the writer wants to write about that particular topic and what he or she believes that the audience will derive from reading the article.
The last sentence should explain why the writer has selected this particular issue to be addressed and what significance that particular subject has to the reader. It should also help the writer to determine the process by which the article will be written.
Literary essay guidelines
A literature review essay is a story. So the last sentence of the literature review should lead the reader into the story of this literature review.
So first let us see what the basic aim of a literature review is. A literature review aims to summarize and analyze the works of other authors on a particular chosen topic. So it is a sort of critical essay and analytical essay both combined together to form a literature review. It also follows the basic essay formats as is seen in all other essays. While writing a literature review one has to keep in mind the following points:
First the topic has to be selected. Then issues relevant to topic are to be found out and examined. Basically the scope and the objective of the topic needs to be analyzed and worked upon. Once the scope and the objectives are understood the writer will have a clear picture of what to write and how much to write.
Then the next important thing will be to look for subject matter related to the topic at hand. Various articles and literature works will have to collected and it will involve a lot of research work on the writer’s part to gather related and relevant data.
Then the writer has to organize all the data collected and evaluate them according to their importance and contribution level towards the topic. He or she will have to sort through each data and decide which one will help the reader to understand the topic better and do away with the ones that do not help in explaining the topic well. So this will be another demanding and time consuming research work to sort and sieve the gathered data.
After the data is finalized then the writer will have to discuss the work taken, each separately, critically analyze them and point out the connections with the reviewed topic and the value it has in connection with that topic or issue.
So a literature review essays will consist of the a topic to be reviewed, objectives or scope of the reviewed topic and a clear overview of the entire topic. The review will consist of works by other writers and there should be a category which will divide the works according to their for or against views on the topic. Each work will have to be discussed and relevance to the topic to be pointed out, similarly the differences with the topic will also have to be explained. For each work by another author the writer will have to check for evidences for the author’s claims and also the author’s credentials will also have to be checked. The writer will have to keep in mind the author’s views and see whether they are open minded or prejudiced. How well the author can convince or persuade his reader is another aspect which the writer has to take note of.
So a literature review generally consists of an analysis of the works of other authors on that particular topic and a proper placing of each work in consideration to its value towards a better understanding of the topic.
Thus, the question of how to write a review essay on literature should not cause problems, if the above rules are followed and the appropriate in-depth research on the given or selected topic is conducted.