How To Write A Literature Review From Start To Finish (Advanced Tactics For PhDs And Researchers)

researchers and PhD students are you currently struggling with writing the literature review then in this video I'm going to show you exactly my proven framework for writing an excellent literature review be it for a research paper or for a thesis and I'll show you specifically how to avoid being descriptive how to structure coherent argument in your literature review how to vary the referencing pattern to ensure a coherent Story how to link your ideas together and how to lead into the research Gap and your research question so let's dive in and get started and just to let you know as well that this video is a full presentation that is normally available only on my paid program PhD accelerator but I thought I would make it available for you here as well to provide you as much value and as much help to help you write an excellent literature review so I hope you will find it really really valuable if you do hit the like and the Subscribe button hello everybody and welcome back to week three of PhD accelerator and in this video we're going to be talking about and showing you how to actually write your literature review so at this stage you know we've covered a lot of ground in this week you've identified the the text that you need to read you've also learned how to read those texts quickly uh you've probably you know you've kept a good record of those texts prepared some organized notes and then you know we gave you a whole template as well for and and showed you how to structure exactly your literature review so at this stage you know the only thing that is left is to actually go out there and write it but that when you're writing it there are a couple of important things and a couple of really typical mistakes that you need to avoid and so I want to show you all that in this lecture so that you know you you after this you're ready to to write and you know exactly how to write the rest of your literature review so let's get started um first of all we're going to look at how to present a clear argument and avoid being descriptive like if there's one problem with the literature reviews that PhD students write and that you know supervisors complain about all the time is that it's descriptive now the problem is that very often no explanation is giving so you're just told you need to be more critical you're too descriptive right but how do you actually do that well in this video I'm going to right at the very start I'm going to show you exactly how to present a clear argument avoid being descriptive and also how to be more critical in the literature review and what that actually means so you'll come out with a lot of clarity and you'll be able to avoid this really most common mistake with the literature review and then we're also going to look at how you need to summarize information from various sources in order to better support your point and develop a more a more coherent argument and then we're also going to look at you know another aspect of writing a literature review which is focusing on one study in more detail and then I'm also going to show you how to vary your reference pattern so that you know you avoid constant repetitions and you know you have a wider variety of language but also of the ways in which you can emphasize certain things and again maintain better coherence because really you know how you where you put your your references and how you use them can also either help or derail coherence in your in your paragraphs and finally I'm also going to show you you know how to transition between ideas in sentences between sentences between paragraphs and even between different chapters of your thesis so that's everything really flows really really well in your literature review and you can develop an excellent coherent argument so let's get started with the first point and you know while I Was preparing this I think I felt a little bit hungry and I was thinking about waffles because I live in Belgium apparently and Belgium one of the things that Belgium is very famous for is waffles um and this reminded me of you know this word in English that is also waffle but it's too waffle it's a verb and it basically means to you know go on and on and on and about something right and this is something that you need to avoid and you know as much as waffles are delicious you probably you know don't want to overeat on on waffles you know because they're you know they're not that nutritious and full of sugar and everything so that's why you know at the very beginning we're gonna be talking about avoiding waffling in here so what waffling is waffling basically means you know speaking or writing at length in a very vague Manner and in a very lengthy manner as well that really fails to get to the point you know and this basically means that you're just being too descriptive it so you know you're not being precise you're not being to the point you're taking a lot of time and space to say a very simple thing you know and this is basically waffling right and you know why do you want to avoid waffling because it's really high in calories right waffles are incredibly high in calories and wolfing is the same you know it's got a lot of calories meaning words but it's low in nutrients uh you know waffles don't really have many vitamins and and nutrients they're not really very good for us granted you know they are delicious you know but they're not very good for you and waffling in academic writing is the same it's got a lot of words but not many nutrients as in arguments right so you're basically saying a lot but actually you're not saying anything to be honest when you're waffling right so how can you avoid waffling well in order to avoid it you probably should never go to Belgium because than if you are in Belgium you always going to eat waffles but on a more serious note you want to be argumentative and critical by reviewing literature that supports a clear point with a clear overarching purpose or goal in mind AKA The Pyramid Apex and the last part of it you know should be already clear to you because that's something that I explained in one of the previous videos in this week if you haven't learned about the pyramid Apex definitely go back that to review it because a lot of what we're going to cover here isn't going to make a lot of sense otherwise but you know in one of the previous days we actually identified like the main purpose of each of the sections in your literature review and even of each of the sub sections in your literature review right and this is the overarching purpose like if you don't have that purpose then you're going to be waffling right if you have that purpose you're much less like much more likely to avoid offline and what is also very important here is being argumentative and critical and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that as well right so just as a quick revision you know as I said we covered it in one of the previous days in week three um if you haven't done it go back there and take a look at you know the pyramid Apex will really map out you know the Apex of your pyramid for every section of your thesis in every subsection of your literature review excuse me but just in a nutshell and as a review the pyramid Apex is really that the so what question right it's basically the main point towards which everything else is leading and on which the inverted pyramid balances because remember we're talking you know we're structuring things in the inverts at Pyramid Way from General to specific and that most specific point on which everything else balances and to which everything leads is the pyramid Apex and it's our main argument right and if we have that we we can really you know avoid waffling so that's that's vital the pyramid Apex again so let me give you a couple of examples because you know you might think that I'm talking very high level here and being very theoretical so so let's get a little bit more practical let me show you a couple of different types of waffling I mean if you've been to Belgium you know that they you know they have waffles in liege style and also in in other styles in in different cities and it's the same with academic waffling they waffling comes you know really in different styles and the first you know type of waffling that you want to avoid is describing how or where a study was conducted when the focus is for example on results you know so let's say you know you're talking about you're reviewing the literature and telling us like what people have found and then you say something like you conducts a case study analysis in China and it's like you know what's the point of it like you know fair enough like like he or she conducted a case study analysis but that's not really relevant I'm not interested in that it's just you know being very descriptive the second type of waffling is describing what a researcher did and not what they found and that's a very common problem that I see all the time in students writing so it's saying something like Gonzalez discusses wide bias in hiring practices okay I I got that but like what what did Gonzalez found find that's what I'm interested in like because you know you want to lead us somewhere so so what what do what did Gonzalez find about white bias in hiring practices right this sentence tells us absolutely nothing right um it's just purely descriptive also you know describing the main topic of a book or a paper rather than specific and a relevant message so for example something like coachmatic provides a comprehensive account of grounded theory that covers its definition and typical applications well great but this doesn't give us we we want a definition of grounded Theory right now that that's what I want to know not that somebody wrote a definition of it but you're not giving it to us that's again just being purely descriptive and it's just it's just pure uh waffling it's a lot of calories and very little nutrition sorry to interrupt but if you're enjoying this video and you want more videos like that you want personalized help writing and excellent thesis or research papers then schedule a free one-to-one consultation or we're going to dive deeper into your current challenges and prepare a personalized plan that will help you to achieve your goals faster and then if it turns out it's a good fit we can talk about how working together would look like let's get back to the video and also you know you can as I said if you lack a well-defined pyramid Apex you might be going nowhere and you're being purely descriptive so I'm going to show you a larger chunk of text here take a quick look at it you might want to pause the video and see how you know whether this text is going anywhere does it have a pyramid Apex right so if you read it like you know when I read it my immediate question is like so what like and like what am I supposed to think about it like where is this even going you know it's just I'm not saying it's completely wrong but it's just you know describing things and describing what other Studies have found but that doesn't seem to be any point to it it's not going anywhere you know like that pyramid is completely out of balance it doesn't have any Apex at the moment right and that the reader doesn't know what to do with it like if this paragraph ends here like I really don't know what to think about it you know so that's why it's really important to ask yourself so what right in order to identify that pyramid Apex and keep that overarching point in mind whenever you're doing literature review okay so you know having a clear pyramid Apex is one way to avoid waffling but another way to avoid it is to be argumentative so there are a couple of ways in which this can be achieved first of all you want succinct presentation so you want to cut information that is purely descriptive which I've just shown you before right and that's not Advance the argument so if you're writing something and like you're just presenting something for the sake of presenting it but it doesn't serve any um purpose it doesn't lead to the pyramid Apex just just cut it it's it's pointless calories right just just cut them it's got to be relevant as well so you want to present the information that is relevant to support the pyramid Apex because you know again if you imagine this inverted pyramid balancing on the Apex if you put too much on it on the top right and out of balance it's just going to fall over right it's got to be well balanced and it's got to be relevant to hold that Apex that so you know for example if your focus is to critique the previously used methodologies don't give me the results I'm not interested in the results on the other hand if you're presenting the results of previous studies to advance a certain point of view then you know don't spend sentences giving us the topics of those studies or telling us in depth what the methodology of those studies are because that's pointless it's completely irrelevant right also you know you need to have clear Direction so remember you're always going towards the predefined pyramid Apex and you define it in one of the previous videos here in one of the previous days of this week and importantly there's got to be a defined position as well you've got to present a clear position and support it it with literature right and obviously I don't mean you have to do that in every paragraph or at the end of every subsection but on on a larger scale like we've got to see where all these arguments are converging and there's got to be some sort of clear position to which you're leading us right so let's see how this is done in practice again I'm going to show you a chunk of a larger chunk of text feel free to pause this video to uh to read it more carefully and then you know try to see how this text is being argumentative and how it's avoid how it avoids waffling all right so you know if you've read this text you can see that you know there is very clear Direction in this text right we've got a very clear Apex point and and the writer clearly you know has a point that the writer wants to you know convince us or something here and prove a certain point and everything that that is before builds builds to that there is no you know there is no waffle here I mean there is some detail about the study you know and and some detail about the data but that is very much Justified bearing in mind you know what the what the writer wants to tell us and what the pyramid Apex is and there is a very clear position here there is nothing in this paragraph that is irrelevant it's all got a very clear direction towards this last main point that the writer wants to make right so that's how you can be argumentative now Third Way so we've got you know having a clear pyramid Apex and then being argumentative can help us avoid waffling the third way is to be critical how how can you be critical you know because that's something that you've probably heard from your supervisor if you haven't heard it yet don't worry you're going to hear it a million times like you're not being critical enough you know you're being descriptive you're not being critical but the problem is that you know in my experience at least few supervisors explain it specifically and in detail step by step what actually being critical means and how you can actually you know carry it out in your thesis right so I wanna I wanna show you how to do that right here so you know one way of being critical is acknowledging the limitations of research you know and so when you're referring to certain studies you know you could criticize that methodology right in order to for example say that these studies are flawed or you might want to acknowledge the limitations and then further you know still defend the results of those studies but that's one way of thinking critically about previous research you know you can also defend your your own position by presenting valid counter arguments right so you know you might there might be some limitations to you know to to your argument or to the studies that you're using in order to support your argument but then you know you might want to you acknowledge them first but then you bring in other studies the results of other studies and valid counter arguments in order to still continue advancing your argument right so again let me show you how this is done in practice um so here's another short text feel free to pause the video and read it first right and as as you can see here you know um there is you know we've got the main point presented right at the beginning here in the first uh sentence right and then you know the the writer is critical straight away of that evidence so the writer kind of anticipates anticipates what critics of of this study or approach might say right and you know and the writer acknowledges that that the results might be due to the lower number of features right um but then at the end of that paragraph the writer still defends the main point of view right so you know if if we didn't have that last part of the sentence if it just finished that with you know this might be due to the lower number of features you know we would be like so what's the point of even presenting that study right I mean you are you're clearly arguing a point here right you want to you want to convince us of something so so do that like you know acknowledge the limitations of of of a study or your position you know that's very important but then try to defend it as well right and this is how you know the writer does it does it here for example now um the third way in which you can be critical is to present the opposing point of view and critique that oppoising point of view so I mean you know you've got your pyramid Apex but other researchers might have slightly different pyramid apexes right we don't all agree in research on the certain areas where you know different people have slightly different ideas right and that's that's great that's fine um so you know you need to acknowledge those different points of view but then you know in order to advance your argument you can't just leave it that you can't just acknowledge those other points of view and then stop you know because you're advancing towards your Apex you know you're not acknowledging this obstacle you know and then you need to critique it and show it why it's not valid and show us why you know we should still go to your Apex how how is this done in practice well again you know I've got a short chunk so chunk of text um here for you right and if you if you read it right you can see that you know the first two sentences kind of present a position you know that's that some researchers have adopted right and the writer even gives an advantage of that position and say why this you know approach has been successful right but then we've got a critique of that approach right um and then you know this critique is probably further developed right in order to advance towards our Apex so this is really what being critical means and how you can avoid waffling so you know being avoiding waffling and creating a clear argument and being critical avoiding being descriptive is a really really important point it's that's why I'm tackling it first and it's probably the most important point in your literature review right that you need to get right on a on a PhD level so that's why I also prepared um a pin up for you about avoiding waffling and it's available for you uh to download in the in the resources uh section it's called avoiding waffling uh peanut pinup it's a PDF document right so um this is what it says one of the key things in a literature review is avoiding waffling or being descriptive you need to be you need to present a clear argument throughout and remember keep the pyramid Apex like imagine that pyramid in your mind the inverted pyramid with the Apex you know and present only relevant points that are taking you tall with it so every point that you make should be like one brick that you put you know from the top from the most General bricks to the more more and more specific bricks towards the Apex you know you want to critically analyze previous studies pointing out the limitation you know you want to acknowledge differing points of view but always maintain a clear and well reasoned position you know remember you've got to be going and taking us somewhere in your literature review that's um that's absolutely vital so I would recommend you know you you keep it printed somewhere um as you're writing your literature review to really remind yourself of this crucial point to avoid waffling so that's that's how it's done um so I would encourage you to you know immediately put it into practice right now and and revise what you've written so far and if you haven't written anything yet then you know definitely print the pin up here and and when you're writing really remind yourself and you know and I hope this as well this analogy with waffles will will help you that you know you know that delicious and everything but the you know they're full of calories I.E words but very little nutrients I.E very little arguments or content in them right that's why we want to avoid waffling sorry to interrupt but if you're enjoying this video and you want more videos like that you want personalized help writing and excellent thesis or research papers then schedule a free one-to-one consultation where we're going to dive deeper into your current challenges and prepare a personalized plan that will help you to achieve your goals faster and then if it turns out it's a good fit we can talk about how working together would look like let's get back to the video all right and now as you're writing the literature review there will be two things that you need to do like 90 of the time you will be summarizing information from various sources and then maybe 10 of the time you will be focusing on one study in a little bit more detail so let's first look at you know how this works summarizing ideas from various sources um take a look at this paragraph that I pulled up here for you um and you know pause the video read it and think about you know this question what is the problem with the content and the referencing in this paragraph right so if you've read this paragraph you know you can see that there is just one reference and it's at the very end of this paragraph right now there is a lot of information here and there are a lot of statistics and everything but we don't know where that information comes from you know because the the reference is just placed at the very end of the of the last sentence so you know we can assume that the last sentence comes from that but what about all the other information and obviously another problem is that you know we only have support from one um study or one research right so that's that makes this whole argument and this whole presentation much weaker you know and it would be you know it would be made stronger if we had more referencing here so you know first of all summarizing information from various sources um what is it why do we do it and when do we do it let me just add the animation here so that it's not all text at once so what is it it's basically using reference to more than one study to support a single point and it's also using you know using different studies within the same paragraph to support the overarching arguments so referring to different um papers and books right not just one throughout for example the whole paragraph why do you want to summarize information from various sources well you want you want to do it to show you have read widely right but you also want to you know use it for summing up years or Decades of research because you know often we want to say like you know what has been studied in the last 10 years or how how the literature has developed in the last uh two decades or something like this right so that's when we need to bring in information from various sources obviously this is also going to add validity to your points because you know if you're using let's say 10 studies to support your position or arguments well then it's much more difficult to disagree with it right if you're just using one or two or maybe three then it's much easier to point out problems with it because then you know this probably means that you haven't looked at the studies that might disprove your position right and obviously it increases objectivity as well because you know if if your whole argument is based on one or two studies you know maybe from a specific region in the world it's it sounds very subjective and it's very difficult you know to to maintain objectivity there um when do you want to summarize information from various sources well you want to do it first of all to support key points so if there is an important point that you're making you should definitely have more than one reference you know if also and that's going to be the case in many many parts of your literature review there will be many studies that have the same that have very similar results or have maybe focused on very similar things and so on well that's that's when you want to do that's when you want to use several references I mean don't go over the top like you know don't all of a sudden refer to like 10 papers uh in in one kind of reference after one sentence you know typically you know it's it's around five five is probably like maximum that people use for any given reference like five different papers that they're referring to you know and also you know you want to use it when you you want when you're trying to summarize what we know thus far about a given phenomenon that's another case so let me show you a couple of you know more practical examples of it so you can get a better view of what you know of what I'm talking about here so you know in here we've got we've got a few examples several studies have dealt with right other Studies have aimed too and even others have evaluated right so in here the writer clearly is is showing us you know uh perhaps you know the historical development of research and you know and really what we know thus far about several different topics and that's why you know you can see that every sentence has several references um in them right so so that's one example of summarizing information from various sources and now in here um I want to draw your attention to uh to one of the tenses um that you can see right in here that we had underlined right which was have dealt with have aimed have evaluated right and this tense is called present perfect and it's very common in you know in a certain aspect of the of the literature review um and the first of all what is present perfect um present perfect is basically built of either has or have so if you have the third person singular like he she or it it has and then everything else is have and then the past participle or the third form of the of the verb right so if you have a verb like uh study then it's studied right in the past participle example several studies have dealt with meringues or similar systems right when do we use it well we use it to sum up years or Decades of research you know when you're basically connecting the past with the present and you know some typical phrases are like several studies like what you saw here several studies have dealt with with you know since 2010 researchers have focused on and in recent decades there has been a lot of development in blah blah blah right so so this is you know when you're going to use this tense present perfect and really only in this specific situation right so it's used in the literature review is very limited and very specific to this one situation now another way to summarize information from various sources is um is this right so in here you know the the writer isn't really summarizing what has happened you know in the last 20 years or something like this right in here rather the writer is making important points and each of these points is supported by more than one reference like you know for example the first point um has one two three four five references right but but there is no like you know that several studies have studied this or you know since 2010 research has shown no it's just you know um the point right that's you know speaker hood is not a biological but rather socially constructed trait and the same you know the same with the second point where you we've got two references and then we also have several references in the following point right and you know notice that in here there is no present perfect it's just in the present tense Scholars recognize uh Davis points out you know is assigned right it's all in the present tense because we are making um just a specific point right so that's that's another sense that you will have to use and this sense you will probably use it like 90 of the time in your literature review and it's present simple and it really makes your life very easy because you know as the name suggests it is very simple so basically most of the time is just the base form of the of the verb I can hear you have recognize right and then you know if it's at the third person then you need to add s like you did with Davis here Davis points out right and that's basically it it's very simple right and when do we use it you use it to present facts uh you're going to use it to present arguments but you're also going to use it to present results from the literature so basically you use it for almost everything in like 90 of the cases apart from this specific use of present perfect that I showed you uh here for everything else we are using present simple right so that will make your life very very easy so now you know to further sort of Consolidated I prepared for you a cheat sheet it's called Uh reporting verbs grammar cheat sheet and to help you familiarize yourself with the correct grammar use in the in the literature review and um it's available for you in the in the resources uh section for you to to download it's a PDF document which looks like this right uh so you can download it right and then in here you know I outlined the three main senses that will be used right so uh present simple and present perfect are the two that we've already discussed we haven't discussed past simple and when it's used but we will uh later on in this video so don't worry we'll get to that and then um I also talk about you know how to use some of the most common um reporting verbs in here and I'll introduce you know a good few of them for you so that you can vary your pattern of referencing and but in here you know I mostly focus on grammar and how to actually use them so as a quick explanation some verbs are only followed by a noun phrase you know so for example one of the participants casts doubt on the problem of right I cannot say that like I cannot say one of the participants doubt on that the problem is no it's all always followed by a noun phrase right then there are some verbs that are only followed by that in a sentence so like one of the interviewees argued that greater attention should be paid to I cannot really say you know one of the interviewees argued greater attention it doesn't it doesn't work right and then finally there are lots of verbs that can be followed by both by either a noun phrase or that and a sentence right so so in that case you can choose and you've got these three here so I would really recommend again that you know you you print it out or you keep it somewhere available as you're writing the literature review you know whenever you're in doubts which tense should I use you know how do I use a particular reporting verb to use it correctly then so you've got this and you can avoid making mistakes all right so you know so far we've looked at how and why you need to summarize information from various studies let's now look at how you can focus on one study in more detail and as I mentioned at the very beginning this is much less common than summarizing information from various studies so if you're in doubts like you know focusing on something is is much less used is maybe like 10 percent of the time in the literature review you're going to use it 90 of the time you're going to be doing summarizing information from various sources which I've just shown you but sometimes in certain specific cases which I want to show you now it is very appropriate to focus on one study in a little bit more detail so what what is it first of all you know so as the name suggests it's basically presenting one particular study in Greater detail in more than one sentence right sometimes even in a whole paragraph why why do we do something like this why would you want to focus on one study in more detail well you want to do it to add specific information that is necessary to support our argument so in here again you know we are thinking about the pyramid Apex right and our main argument so that's you know I know I've repeated this a lot you know this pyramid Apex but it is you know it is crucial if you don't have it you're going to mess up your literature review I I promise you you know um you need it for for everything so you want to know your pyramid Apex and then if adding more specific information in more detail makes sense then definitely do it right and when do we do it you know when the study is key and the detail is required to take us to the pyramid Apex for example you might need to provide methodological details why because maybe you know um those details are necessary for the reader to understand how the study was conducted so that then you can critique that study because if you want to critique the methodology of a particular study like you you've got to show us first of all how it was conducted right and you know you might want to present several key points introduced in in one work so maybe there is like a seminal book or a groundbreaking study that made you know like two or three really important contributions so then you know you can introduce that study and then say you know what these two three key points are you might also want to spend some more time if you're critiquing a particular study you know so that you can cover all the bases and then first maybe present that study briefly and then show us the limitation of it and then you know maybe you might detail the results of a particular study as well and that's and that's when you're going to provide a little bit more detail so let's look at an example in here I'm going to show you an example where um you know the writer is focusing in more detail um about one on one study because they are outlining several key points so you know in here we are really presenting a seminal work and we are introducing several Imports and points right that's why you know we are spending two very long sentences almost like an entire paragraph on one particular study right but notice that you know we don't continuously refer to this study you know we don't say widows in 1994 after every single sentence you know for example the second sentence starts with he also further criticizes and and we know that he refers to Widow Zone because that's the only previous researcher that has been mentioned right and it's not necessary to put widowson at the end of that sentence again right now you know you could also um you know focus on on one study in a lot of detail in several sentences but this can also sometimes be done in just one sentence using relative clauses for example we can add a little bit more to the sentence to give us some detail about for example what a researcher did um for example you've got you've got this right so we've got cerebral and Rose who analyzed for English as a foreign language course right so you know this is adding some extra information about how the study was conducted where it was conducted right and this must be of course relevant in the context of of your argument and the pyramid Apex but that's not another way of of doing that right um so you know with relative clauses so those who and which there are a couple of important points so you know use who to add more information about the researcher so a person right and then notice that you always put a comma before it and a comma at the end of that Clause as well right and use which or that to add information about um a study right in a study which that investigated right and in here there is no comma because you know we are defining this study we've got in s study we don't know which one this is and you're providing us some more information to Define it right and you can also omit which or that by putting the verb in ing right so in a study investigating this issue in Vietnam Yang concluded that right so this is this is how relative clauses work now I want you to notice as well that there we we are using past simple um quite a lot so we discussed present perfect present simple but also what is used is past simple um so you've got an example here um Serbian Rose who analyzed right that's that's in the past and past simple is also quite simple you know it's just the basic verb with Edie 99 of the time it's regular some typical irregular verbs are lead LED deal doubt find found right but really 99 of the verbs are regular so you know in this past simple is most typically used when we talk about what a researcher did in other words to talk about the methodology of a particular study you know we don't use past simple to talk about you know the writer's position you know what is generally true uh what the writer uh you know what the results were and things like that we we very often use it to talk about the methodology of a particular study and um if you want more information on it then remember we had the reporting verbs grammar cheat sheet right and in here you've got past simple right that is also presented here and and how to use it and then I also prepared for you um another cheat sheet with the most common irregular verbs and it's also available in the resources section right so you can download it it's a PDF document right and as I said in academic writing ninety percent of verbs are regular so we don't have to worry about them you just add Ed at the end but there are a few that are common and they are irregular right there aren't many as you can see there's probably like 10 15 here I made a list for you right and you've got them in the past simple and the past participle you know a lot of the times you know past simple and past participle are the same right sometimes they are different like showed and show or took and taken right but there aren't really many of them right so you know again if you feel that this is something that you're struggling with you know when you want to be more accurate then I would just print it out put it somewhere next to you when you're writing have it readily available so that you can look at these verbs as you're writing and avoid you know the most common problems sorry to interrupt but if you're enjoying this video and you want more videos like that you want personalized help writing and excellent thesis or research papers then schedule a free one-to-one consultation we're going to dive deeper into your current challenges and prepare a personalized plan that will help you to achieve your goals faster and then if it turns out it's a good fit we can talk about how working together would look like let's get back to the video alright so at this stage you know you know why waffling is bad and both for your health and for you know your literature review and you also know how to be critical and structure a coherent argument in your literature review and how to summarize information from various sources or sometimes focus on one study in more detail now what I want to look at now is how to vary the patterns in your literature review and so that's you you know you can further able to you're further able to structure a more coherent argument but also so that's you know you really avoid repetition and I find that you know repetition very often also reads to being leads to being very descriptive in your literature review and because of that it also fails to deliver any sort of coherent argument so varying the patterns is very very important and I'm going to show you how to do that so first what is parts and variation it's basically varying how we refer to the literature and what structures and vocabulary you use to do so so for example I mean you can refer to the literature by putting the name of the author as part of the sentence at the beginning like for example you could say something like you 2020 shows that but you could also say you know you could put the study at the beginning and then put the author in brackets at the end of the sentence right so or you could start with the results right so you could you could say something like you know another study shows that and then at the end you put the author in Brackets and obviously which one you choose has an impact on how your text flows in terms of ideas and where you're going with that argument right so that's really really important here I think you know so once again why do we do it why parts and variation well we do it to first of all avoid repetition um so imagine a situation in which you know the writer basically starts every single sentence with the name of the author so they say you shows that and then they say Gonzalez concludes that and then they say kichkovic demonstrates that it's just like after even a couple of sentences it becomes really repetitive and more importantly it's difficult to see like a coherent flow where is that person going with all that repetition because it just starts becoming like a list of you know of studies but that's not what a literature review is a literature review is not just a list of all the studies that you've read a literature review is a coherent argument that's going towards the pyramid Apex so that's why parts and variation is really really important how can you include parts and variation in your literature review well first of all you can use a variety of specific reporting verbs right so you definitely don't want to use verbs like say or tell or write right because they are way too simple and not academic but you know you so you want to use more academic and specific words like you know shows demonstrates but also you want to vary them so you don't want to be all the time saying shows you know use shows Gonzalez shows and other study shows because that just becomes very repetitive as well and you wanna you know you want to be picking the specific reporting verb depending on its meaning because obviously the verb shows is different from the verb finds and it's yet different from the verb you know reveals or from a verb like concludes or highlights right they all have a slightly different meaning and so varying this pattern can help you you know underline what your point is and what you're trying to tell us from this study that you're presenting and this is very very important and you as I mentioned before you also want to change between end of sentence and beginning of sentence references so just as a reminder you could include you know the reference to the study or the person who did that study at the beginning of your sentence like you know Gonzalez shows that but you could also put it at the end you could just write the sentence and then stick the reference at the end and you want to vary the two and also notice what's more common in your field and how researchers usually do it and then you know you also want to emphasize different points right so you could emphasize the action that took place in other words what the researchers did so you could say you know something like one study found that or this study concludes that right so this kind of emphasizes what the researchers did in that study but you could of course you know put slightly more emphasis on the researcher if you put the researcher at the front of the sentence that kind of you know um subconsciously for the reader you know that places more emphasis on on that as well you could of of course emphasize the study you know especially if you say something like you know in a classic or in a groundbreaking study right um you know so if you kind of start the sentences with the study the research you know that that puts more emphasis to that you could also focus on the time right so you could say things like you know more recently or in the last decade right uh or in 2018 so there you clearly want to emphasize the time maybe because you've got some sort of chronological development in your paragraph right and then it makes perfect sense to kind of emphasize the time to see how things developed over time so you know perhaps this sounds a little bit theoretical and out of there and you know not practical enough so I just want to show you a couple of examples of how this actually works in practice so first of all you know here you can emphasize the researcher so here's an example um from a text and you can see that you know the the sentences kind of start with uh the writers right the sorry the authors the researchers right and that kind of you know places more emphasis um on that right on the on the researchers now you could emphasize the the topic right or or in other words what the researchers did in this study like if you say things like have aimed to this kind of introduces what the researchers tried to do right it doesn't Focus so more on the researcher because we don't even have the name of the researcher in the sentence right but more on the on the on what they did right same here you know even others have evaluated right that that kind of again focuses on the action on the topic on what the researchers did right and you know and notice as well the the difference in in kind of in purpose like in this paragraph the writer does it because their purpose is to review like the main topics that have been studied so far so it kind of and because there are you know there is more than one researcher that did a certain things or evaluated a certain things then it makes perfect sense to focus on the topic or the action rather than the researcher right but we can of course emphasize the investigation or time as well right so we can say things like in a classic study right and then 10 years later and then more recently right so in here we have a bit of a chronological development because you can see that you know the first study mentioned is 2006 then we've got 2012 and 2019. so you know I'm starting with a classic study because that was you know the first study let's say to do something right and then I'm going you know forward in time so in order to make that chronological development I kind of have to to First emphasize the time I have to say 10 years later right and then you know finally more recently right because my development here is chronological that's why I'm choosing to focus more on that than like the researcher did here focus more on you know on the topic or on what the researchers did right so you know in order to kind of further consolidate it I prepared a cheat sheet for you and it's called literature review pattern variation uh cheat sheet it's available for you to download in the resources section right above uh right above the the video all right so I'll pull it up for you here on the on the screen so it's called literature review parts and variation cheat sheet it's a PDF document right and it looks like this and this basically gives you like all the most common phrases um for you know for the different types of parts and variations we've got emphasizing the researcher but we've got emphasizing the time as well the topic the investigation right highlighting what the researcher did in the study right so there's quite a quite a lot um in here you know presenting researchers position as well right so that's um I would really recommend that you you take a you take a quick look at that and if you find that difficult you know definitely again print it or have it readily available for yourself as you're writing you know so you don't have to kind of spend uh time thinking about like how to say it you've got you know you've got it all here right so I've done I've done the hard work for you you now just have to take it and um and use it you know and and try to vary the patterns but don't worry them just for variations sake there's got to be a point to it so remember that you know we emphasize in time because time is important in that paragraph because there is chronological development that's why I'm emphasizing the time I'm emphasizing the the topic because you know what I want to show is what the researchers did yeah what what have been some of the topics that people have studied right um you know I'm emphasizing the investigation or that particular study because you know because it's a very important study and and I need to I need to point that out and and the whole kind of organization of my paragraph is around different important studies so always keep the pyramid Apex in mind as you're doing it always always always right um so that's um so that's how how this is this is done now we're going to move on to the last Point um here which is linking your ideas together and this is crucial really this is you know I I left it until the last moment here because you know it's kind of the icing on the cake like you you know you first need the content and you first need to start writing the literature review and you need to know your pyramid Apex and you don't need to know how to summarize information and start actually doing it but then the icing on the cake that's vital is linking your ideas together and it's vital because you know without linking your ideas together it will be really really difficult for the reader to understand what's your main point it will be really difficult for the reader to see what the pyramid Apex is that the reader will kind of have to guess a lot of the times um and it won't be that obvious so that's why you know you want to learn how to link them together and so that's you know this will help the reader but also the second really important point is that I think it will really help you to to develop a coherent argument and avoid being descriptive because if you if you you know once you've written let's say a couple of sentences like you should ask yourself like what is the purpose of that second sentence that I wrote I mean what is its relationship to the first sentence is it giving contrasting information or is it the effect of the previous sentence and if you can't figure that out then it means that your two sentences don't make any sense right so being aware of how to link your ideas together will also help you structure a more coherent argument so this is really really important so first of all you know what is linking your ideas together it's basically using words and phrases that connect our ideas into a logical flow so to give you an example of a word you know firstly secondly however right these words connect our ideas but of course we can we can also use whole phrases like despite the fact that but also you know phrases that kind of repeat what has been said before like you know um another problem with this approach is right so let's say previously a couple of sentences ago you said one problem with this approach is and now a couple of sentences later you're saying another problem with this approach is and that's you know provides a beautiful link between your ideas and as a reader it's crystal clear to me what you're doing in that text why we do it well as I said you know it ensures coherence and guides the reader along to the pyramid Apex really so you know first of all it helps you once again to to have Clarity on on your way towards the pyramid Apex and it guides the reader so you can think of it as as road signs you know so when you know driving your car or riding your bike there are plenty of signs around you that can help you and you know not have an accident right and they they help you get to your destination safely and they help other users of that road in our case of a PhD the readers to get safely to the destination as well without having a crash right and if we take away all those signs from the road like there will be crashes all the time and that's what happens with a thesis or a research paper if you take away all linking there is just crashes everywhere like your logic crashes like your pyramid Apex crashes the reader has a crash with your ideas as well and like and it hurts really to to read your text and it all goes to hell really so so think about this analogy road signs and they're very very important for your own safety and for the safety of other users of that same wrote so what why do we do it like linking your ideas together well first of all we do it within sentences right so you might have one sentence and in that sentence you know you have some sort of linking like um you know unless you use linking words comma it is difficult to have uh cohesion in your text right so you have unless linking it within one sentence but of course you can do that between two sentences so like you know first you need to have a clear idea on what the topic of the paragraph is stop second or moreover you also need to know how to link your ideas right um but you want to do it between paragraphs as well so let's say you know the first paragraph um talked about you know the the first principle of linking your ideas right and it said something like you know the first really important way in which you can link your ideas together is to use linking words and we describe that in one paragraph now the second paragraph is going to say something like you know the second or another really important principle of linking your ideas together is blah blah and this clearly provides a beautiful link between the two paragraphs and you can do the same between sections in your literature review so you might remember you know I showed you your literature review template if you haven't downloaded it yet if you haven't started using it go back to that lecture and then downloaded that and in that template I indicated you know here provide a link to the following section right um so that's you know that's why I'm telling you to also do this in order because kind of everything makes more sense as well when you're doing these videos in order is you know so you have to provide links between those sections and it can be as simple as saying like you know bearing this in mind the following section will focus on and then you tell us what the focus on is you know it could be something something as simple right and then the same thing with with chapters you know and again it can be very simple it can be something like you know having presented the methodology the following chapter um focus presents the results of the study or something like this right again very simple link but it's you know it then binds your whole writing together and it's much easier for the reader to understand why you're doing what you're doing and why you've put certain things in a certain order and believe me it will really help you clarify that for yourself and as you're going through this process of linking your ideas together you will discover plenty of places where you're like hold on this actually doesn't make any sense I can't find any logical link between these two sentences or paragraphs or sections so I need to think how to move them around so how do we do it well I've already given you quite a few examples you know you can use linking words like however because in addition You know despite and things like that you can also use the Terminus uh determiners are words like this or that or these or those right which basically substitute you know another word that you've used before or or like used to kind of point to which specific approach or word we're talking about like this approach right or these factors like the ones that I've mentioned before you can use pronouns pronouns are basically used to substitute a given noun like so instead of saying approach uh you just say it and in the next sentence and this provides a clear link and you can also use relative clauses and I've shown you before in this video a little bit more about how to use relative clauses right um and they you know relative clauses start with who which uh that where when and things like that right so um let's give a couple of examples you know maybe this was you know a little bit high level theoretical let's dive into some practical examples here so how can we do it within a sentence well for example like this using although right although the sample size was not specifically powered to examine socio-demographic uh differences um the spelling is is wrong actually yeah there shouldn't be a hyphen sorry about that um in self-monitoring behaviors it does represent so although here is always used to show contrast in one sentence you can't use although to show contrast with the previous sentence it's always between two different ideas in one sentence remember about that um how do you show in this case contrast between two sentences well these results cannot be generalized to other forms of dietary self-monitoring stop however electronic forms blah blah blah so this second sentence starting with however is going to have a different idea some sort of contrast with the previous sentence now we can also do it between paragraphs right so we've got the end of one paragraph here and then we've got a beginning of a new paragraph here and in this case the linking is very simple it's just using the word however right and you could use other linking words like furthermore or something like this but you could also use some phrases or try to repeat one of the key ideas of the previous paragraph to provide that logical link and of course you can do that between sections right so consequently in the following section um English is a lingua Franca in English as an international language research will be explored right so it's very simple you just say in the following section and then you tell us what you're going to do and consequently provides a nice link to you know to what happened before in this section right and between chapters as well like in the following chapter the study proper is discussed very simple but again you know provides really beautiful links between all the parts of your thesis and thus in in the long term make a huge difference for you know creating a coherent argument right so if you have a here that's you know your thesis doesn't flow there is no story to it as a lot of Supervisors like to like to say it's very likely because your ideas are not linked coherently and there is as a result there is no clear pyramid Apex and as a result your writing isn't going anywhere and adding that linking will really help you do that so um I prepared another cheat sheet for you and it's called linking your ideas together cheat sheet to sort of help you consolidate that really um and it's a PDF document right I'll pull it up for you here on the screen you can download it from the resources section above this video right right and in here I explained you know the three or the four levels actually of of linking right within sentences between sentences between paragraphs and between sections and chapters right so you know what we've got here you know we've we've kind of already covered but I also wanted to give you a table with you know the most common linking words I'm not saying these are all linking words but these are the ones that I used most frequently in uh in research actually right so these are the ones that you should be um using so here are the words that we would use for addition what I mean by addition is you know adding kind of similar information right or adding information on the same topic to what you've already said um in terms of contrast notice that we can have contrast between two um sentences this is actually sorry this is the other way this is the other way around I need to correct it because it's not correct linking your ideas together cheat sheet right sorry about that it's actually the other way around so this is to link ideas within one sentence and then these are two link ideas between two sentences right it should be it should be like that so so yeah notice that we can you can show contrast between two sentences so basically what happens with these words right is that you know you have a sentence before and you finish that sentence and then the new sentence introduces different information some sort of contrast right and that's when you're going to use these linking words on the other hand you can also have um linking words within one sentence so this basically means that you have two different ideas in the same sentence and that's when you're using these words right now in here you can see that despite is has the fact that in Brackets and the reason for that is that you know if you if you want to follow despite with a sentence then you need to use the fact that so if you want to say uh you know despite the fact that I worked very hard today I did not write very much right then you need to use the fact that with although a while you don't right despite and in spite of can also be followed by verb ing so like despite working very hard I didn't whatever right um so that's that's kind of the main difference in terms of grammar right and then we can also give reasons right for something and that's that's with done within one sentence right so you know since I worked very hard I achieved my goals or due to the fact that I worked hard or due to working hard I achieved my goals right so it's all one sentence here and then we can also show consequence uh and that's done between two sentences right so you have one sentence you finish it and then you say something like you know consequently like you know I worked very hard full stop um as a result I achieved my results right or thus I achieved my results right that's that's kind of how it works so this works between two sentences and this is within one sentence now you'll notice that I kind of crossed out some words and these are just informal not very academic words so like so um but right that you should avoid and also also when it's used at the beginning of a sentence followed by comma it's it's slightly informal if you say you know it should also be pointed out that that's perfectly fine if you kind of put also you know in between um some other words then it's fine but if you start a sentence with also it sounds just a little bit informal so that's something that you should pay attention to all right so that's um that's the the cheat sheet yeah for you right um so um we've covered quite a lot of ground here today really really a lot of ground but you know after after this video you know you you've got all the bases covered you you know you know how to find texts you found a lot of text you've taken a lot of notes you've structured your entire literature review and now in this video I showed you how to write your literature review and really how to you know how to spell everything out and how to get the creative juices flowing and and get it done you know and first of all we talked about the importance of avoiding waffling right so you know I introduced that image of of Belgian waffles on on purpose like try to remember it if you visualize things like that with certain images you're more likely to remember it so remember you know waffles are delicious but you know they're kind of full of calories right they're full of unnecessary words and and despite being delicious they're not very nutritious right they don't have a lot of vitamins um in other words they don't have a lot of content so if you're waffling you're being descriptive you're you're using a lot of words but you're not really giving us any content you know and you're not going anywhere so that's why you know we talked about how to be critical and how to develop an argument and remember you always have to keep the pyramid Apex in mind that's why you know in one of the previous videos you learned how to clarify that pyramid Apex for every section because this allows you to develop an argument right and then we also talked about summarizing information from various sources and this really is what you will have to be doing most of the time in your literature review so you know in a PhD you really need to show that you have read widely and you need to be able to support your arguments with a wide range of sources very very important and then sometimes you know there are situations where you might want to focus on one study in more detail right this will probably be you know roughly speaking maybe 10 of the time but sometimes you might want to do that and then you know towards the end of this video we also talked about how to vary your reference patterns right so how to you know use for example um how to structure your sentences in a different way to either emphasize the research or emphasize what the researchers did emphasize the time emphasize the study in order again to you know to take the reader towards the apex of the of the pyramid to to develop a clear argument because if every single sentence in your literature review has the same pattern I.E it starts with the author like Gonzalez found that then it's just a list of different studies it's not a literature review so varying your pattern is very very important and finally you know crucial linking ideas together within sentences between sentences between paragraphs between sections and between even chapters you know and that's really what allows you as well to have a coherent story in your thesis or in your research papers linking your ideas together so that's it that's that's how it's done and now you know you know what to do next get it done avoid waffling be critical develop an argument and link your ideas together

Channel: Academic English Now

Views: 82,200

Keywords: academic writing, how to write a thesis, how to write a research paper, academic English, writing a PhD, qualitative research, research gap, literature review, research paper, quantitative research, systematic review, review paper, research proposal, how to write an essay, writing tips, essay structure, research methodology, research methods, phd writing, grad school, dissertation, writers block, post-graduate, post doctoral, how to, thesis

Id: b8Cn9srCzRM

Length: 73min 19sec (4399 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022