How to Write a Literature Review in 30 Minutes or Less

[Music] hi everyone and welcome one thing that I promise you today is that this presentation is going to last less than 30 minutes but I also promise you that if you've already done good research you've read all of your sources that you need to on this topic you have extracted information from them and otherwise summarized the sources and written them up and your summaries are and those source citations are now in a nice alphabetical list if you've done that what is called annotated bibliography and you're ready to start on this literature review I guarantee you and if you follow these steps I'm about to give you you can write the rough draft of this literature review in 30 minutes or less but first a couple of questions question number one what the heck is a literature review or what the bleep is a literature review the second question why the bleep should I care what a literature review is you know it seems like we've got these stodgy professors out there who kind of revel in the fact that they like to give these academic sounding assignments that really had no validity in the real world and the literature review things would be one of those examples but you know what nothing could be further from the truth and let me show you why let's say that you just graduated with a BS degree in human resources management congratulations on that GPA by the way three point eight three and also congratulations on having landed your first job as an administrative manager at caliber systems a firm with over 1,800 employees you've definitely got room for advancement there so everything's looking great right now one day your supervisor comes back from a meeting in the C suite and has a little assignment for you here's the assignment should caliber systems institute a cultural diversity training program and if so what should that program consist of your report which is doing the form of a presentation in two weeks is going to determine the future of your job and your career at caliper systems okay hotshot what's your next move your next move is to go find some answers to some very real questions those questions being what is cultural diversity training is it something that's gaining acceptance in this human resources world or is is considered a waste of money another question one of the various types of cultural diversity training offered today especially in companies of my size caliber systems and in my sector IT consultancy third question what has been the impacts both positive and negative of cultural diversity training on companies in other words before you make a recommendation you've got to have answers to those questions guess what I got some good news for you the experts have already answered all those questions before you there are people who get paid to answer questions like those and publish their results all you need to do is go find those answers the answers that you find in the published results are called the literature and whenever you go and look for them that's called a review or looking for them oMG a literature review you've got the right one for your job as a human resources manager and an IT company that's right and more good news you can do that literature review and five easy steps so here's the take away a literature review is not something that stodgy professors assign just because they like to torture you literature reviews whatever you want to call them are important ways to gather background information before you make a decision before you write up your report now let's take a look at those five easy steps and once you know them and you've seen them Illustrated I guarantee you that you're going to be able to write this literature review in 30 minutes or less when you do background research you record the source of the information to allow others to validate what you say along with the details of what you found so after completing your research you'll have a list that look something like this for the purposes of demonstration we're showing only the first three items from a much longer list in step one you're going to strip this list into two parts one the citations by themselves to the paragraphs containing information from the sources the list of citations will look like this the list of paragraphs will look like this save the list of references and use it as the last page of your literature review will use the paragraphs as the body of your literature review let's note three important things about these summary paragraphs first each paragraph at its beginning contains an in-text citation to its source because we're using APA style the in-text citation consists of the author's last name plus the year publication in parentheses the author's last name is outside of the parentheses because the name is being used as a noun in the sentence second note that the sentences in the paragraph find a way to refer back to the source so that the reader knows the information is from the source and not your own box some examples are the author's present and the article then there's repetition of the author's name in the second paragraph for solely is repeated four times finally notice that the year of publication only has to be repeated once per paragraph okay congratulations on completing step one you've taken your basic research and produced to list a list of citations and a list of paragraphs now your task in step two is to reorder the paragraphs to do this carefully reread them as you do find similarities and differences that will allow you to reorganize the paragraphs in a logical order based on the connections you find among them during this step keep in mind there will be no one universally correct sequence the best sequence is the one that you find and apply effectively for example in our first paragraph the annotation says the author's studied storytelling as a way to increase communication in a culturally diverse workplace so this source is presenting a strategy or a solution for a problem let's label that solution next is a 1996 article by fine that calls cultural diversity in the u.s. workplace quote perhaps the most pressing challenge of our times obviously we'll label this paragraph a description of the problem next for solely describes interviews with a West African man that were hindered because the two men had different attitudes toward technology and communication for solely underscores the need for flexibility and understanding and accepting how someone can be culturally different so let's label this one problem plus need for understanding so a clear pattern is starting to emerge sources that we're finding on this topic describe is the problem or solutions to the problem thus to complete step 2 we will rearrange the summaries according to this problem solution pattern that we're seeing here are seven of the summaries rearranged now a real that review would have far more sources in order to be thorough but in any case we've imposed a clear organizational pattern on our summaries our next step step 3 you decide which summaries should stand alone as a body paragraph and which could be combined your decision will be based on two factors factor one how closely related the summaries are the closer their relationship the more reason you have to combine them factor two is they're linked try to limit your body paragraphs to 10 to 14 lines the fine article can stand alone as a body paragraph because it offers an overview of the problem that dates back to the previous century the next three sources each studied a different group of culturally diverse workers and concluded the same thing but the three summaries together are too long for a single paragraph so the first two can be grouped on the basis of geography a man in West Africa and non-native workers in Australia thus presenting a worldwide problem The Sweeney in Zoo study brings us back to the US and is long enough and important enough to merit its own paragraph all three studies now combined into two paragraphs are tied together by one theme mastery of language by itself is not enough preparedness to deal with cultural differences is also necessary this need to be prepared provides a natural transition to the last three summaries that all discuss solutions so the body of this literature review will have five paragraphs one the first body paragraph will set the stage by defining the problem the second body paragraph will show that the problem is worldwide and requires preparing workers to deal with cultural differences in communication the third body paragraph brings the problem home to the US and reinforces the need for workers to be sensitive to cultural differences the fourth body paragraph presents two minor solutions to the problem and the fifth body paragraph presents an overarching solution diversity training they can apply to virtually any organization the order in combination of the paragraphs are set and now we're ready for step four which is all about turning the summary paragraphs into real paragraphs by adding topic sentences and transitions here's an example of a plain summary paragraph as we wrote it down after research now here is the same paragraph with the topic sentence and transition added let's compare them the topic sentence cultural diversity has long been recognized as a potential problem in the workplace it introduces the topic that will be discussed by the source that comes next but a transition phrase as far back as 1996 find stated links the topic sentence and the source together with the concept of time when there's more than one source in a paragraph a new sentence or thought bridge but sometimes be added between them for example here are two summary paragraphs that we want to combine into one we first add a topic sentence for the two summaries both study geographically dispersed cultures next four so Lee's findings are presented then a thought bridge sentence is added to lead to the second summary and blend them both into a smooth flowing narrative as you see at the end of step four you should have a series of body paragraphs that consist of strong topic sentences followed by source some rays and then transitions from one summoning to the next this review is looking really excellent now it's ready for step 5 in step 5 the body of the literature review gets an introduction paragraph with pieces and a conclusion paragraph because a literature review summarizes the published works of others the thesis statement should bring together the major points discussed by the sources and a phrase such as the following review of literature signals to the readers that they will be reading a literature review not your the author's individual claims arguments or opinions note that the thesis statement for the lit review also reflects the problem-solution organizational pattern of the paragraphs to follow one common strategy from the conclusion paragraph is to open with a restatement of the thesis which brings the reader back to the overall point another common strategy for the conclusion is to comment on any gaps or flaws and the research reviewed of course no literature review would be complete without a title and now's the perfect time to write it because we now know everything that is in our lit review cultural diversity in the workplace overcoming barriers to communication definitely does the job as a further aid organization don't forget to add subtitles between the major sections of your lit review after the introduction of our sample lit review come to paragraph that discuss the problem so our first body section subtitle is defining the problem the next major section presents solutions so it's subtitle is searching for solutions when it comes to the conclusion don't waste an opportunity to provide a specific subtitle that helps to reinforce your thesis instead of just using the neutral word conclusion note how descriptive this subtitle for the conclusion paragraph is preparing for tomorrow today that takes care of step 5 and now you have a solid will organized lit review okay there they are the five easy steps it probably takes about as long to explain them in illustrate them than it would be to actually do them let's review them quickly step number one separate those paragraph summaries from the citations save the citations for your reference page and then you're going to turn those paragraph summaries into your literature review and in doing that the first thing you're going to do is to rearrange those paragraph summaries and a logical order that presents itself to you as you reread them the third step is then to combine whatever summaries need to be combined and then the fourth step is to add in those really important topic sentences and transitions so that they read together smoothly and then add your introduction and conclusion paragraphs and you got yourself a literature review one last thing I want you to keep in mind about a literature review is that the literature review is only a preliminary step in other words it's something that you do to gather background knowledge to kind of bring yourself up to date to the state of the art so that you know exactly what is going on before and what's taking place right now you're the expert so you use the literature review to make yourself the expert on that topic and once you've got all that background knowledge then you can write about it then you can write your thesis then you can write your argument ative report then you can do your presentation because you have made yourself an expert via the literature review okay thanks very much for watching the presentation and I wish you the very best of luck on your literature review

Channel: David Taylor - PeakWriting

Views: 1,443,559

Rating: 4.9394546 out of 5

Keywords: Review of Literature, Literature Review Example, Literature Review Sample, Literature Survey, Literature Review Format, Literature Review Dissertation, Example of Literature Review, Writing a Literature Review

Id: TdJxY4w9XKY

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2017