Research Writing: How to Do a Literature Review.

As part of the future learning course, I've started this blog to track the process of doing a literature review.
We strongly recommend that you record your learning throughout the four weeks in some form of journal or blog. You will see this practice demonstrated through the course on the Teacher’s blog. On a blog, we can see the development of a new text as it unfolds, step by step as we go through the course. Seeing the development process will help you know what to do with your own literature review, and guide you to record and share your own experience in the same way.

What is a literature review and why do it?

This course focuses on principles and practices that are common to any kind of literature reviewing task, large or small, so you can take from it what applies to your own situation. You may have started writing a literature review, or just thinking about it, you may need to write a short and simple one, or develop a mini proposal into a thesis chapter. You might just be wondering whether research is for you, and what this ‘thing’ is that researchers have to write…. whatever your situation, the course aims to help you recognise and appreciate what a literature review can be, and enjoy the process of creating one.

It’s possible to write a simple literature review in a month, but a complex one might take a year or more, so this course aims to raise awareness, and focus on the necessary preparation, rather than the completion of a literature review. We want to help you establish the groundwork, so you can continue to develop your literature review with confidence - and with a community of research peers, if you want to stay in touch with those you meet during the course.

As we explore various literature reviews and how to develop a new one, we’ll be thinking about the lit review as a genre - an important concept in developing understanding of language in context. We’ll be looking at it as a particular way of using language that ‘just works’ in an academic context – not just as a writing task, but also as a way of being academic.