Literature Review Writing: Life in campus is fast-paced. I was still reeling from the effects of the fresha’s bash when I realized it was time to do my project proposal. I remember our lecturer listing the format of our project on the board as an after-thought after a lecture. I remember wondering in the days that followed whether I had perhaps missed classes. Doing my project was definitely a tall order and I had to write a literature review too? Long story short, it was done and no, I did not hire anyone.

 

Ideally, you will want to take your time on research so that you quote the best and the most recent works in your literature review, but, say this is not possible, how do you get your literature review fast enough to hand it in? Here are a few tips you can use.

 

• Google is your friend

Yes, it has been said and I will reiterate. Google is your friend! But there is a catch. You don’t simply just enter your keyword and search for anything that comes up. Remember you want authority sites and material that you can actually use.

Find file extensions such as .edu .gov .study or such. You can even include that at the end of your keyword, for example (fish farming – edu).

Pick as many authority sites as possible.

• Sort through your resource

You probably have around 50 potential sources of you were really thorough. You cannot possibly read through all 50, not when you have a fast deadline. At this point, you skim through all of them, removing those that are not very relevant to what you want and the outdated ones.

You should be able to remain with a manageable list of about 10 to 20.

• Find what people are saying about your topic

After sorting through your sources, perform another Google search on the topic but this time find articles and blog posts. See what other people have said about your topic and the possible controversies around it.

You can now write the first draft. Since you have your project hypothesis, you want your literature review to shed light on it. Find, from your sources, information that gives your literature review background, and work your way through from there.

Note your sources as soon as you have them rather than waiting to do this later, to avoid forgetting or quoting a wrong source.

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At the end of the day, a good literature review will need time and you should, by all means, be willing to give it that time. If you want some more instructions on how to do the actual writing, here is a helpful link.