That beautiful write-up you saw in the library! Those piles of books lying on your research table! Those points you saw on the internet! That roadmap to success in research you saw written on a board somewhere! What do you make of all those things as a research scholar and use them to your benefit? Well. You are in luck. In fact, you are just six steps away from achieving it all. That’s right. Just six steps!
Know your topic well
Can you bring together all the resources that are relevant to your topic and put them together like a summary? That is the very first step towards writing a good literature review. If you are not yet officially decided on a topic, you should consider knowing everything with regards to the topic in your mind. Read up everything you can on it and form a solid topic so that you can prove or disprove at the end of the day.
Review the research guidelines
You may have heard of the American Psychological Association that has framed the guidelines for research at the university level. In fact, the guidelines include how to cite anything you have referenced along with styles, and formats for presenting the materials. Review them once before you can begin penning down that literature review.
Analyse your research materials
What is the point in collecting one material after another if you do not know how to use any of it? Analyse the different research materials you have collected so far and see how you can use them to your advantage or to prove or disprove the hypothesis you have created. In fact, you could also find out what else could be done with the materials.
Create a concept map
Nothing works better than a concept map – both for you as well as your readers. A concept map will be able to explain what you are trying to show your audiences through all your efforts and research work. Besides, trying to explain abstract concepts can be quite a task! So, take the help of a concept map to do the needful for you.
Structure your research
Give all the work you have done so far a structure. A form! Something that will be systematic and still do its work for you! There are a few ways of structuring all your materials in the form of a concrete idea including thematic organisation, the inverted pyramid, and more that you can use in your research work.
Develop a critical essay
The final literature review that you write should not only be structured but it should also be critical and coherent at the same time. Writing the best essay possible should be easy for you and not a daunting task that would take aeons to finish writing. However, following these six steps should make your work stand out from those of the others’.