The purpose of a literature review is for you to analyze and evaluate how scholarly articles are written in your major field, and more particularly with regard to a topic that you find to be of particular interest.  In your research proposal, you set forth, in general terms, what you want to study this semester and why.  For this next assignment, you will build upon the ideas of your research proposal by examining and evaluating what other scholars have had to say about your topic of interest.

The literature review should be about 1200 words long.

In this multidisciplinary section of English 302, a great many fields of study and endeavor are represented.  In all of those fields, however, any attempt to undertake a new study begins with a literature review, a look back at what has already been said regarding that topic.  The writer reviews what has already been written regarding his or her topic, summarizes prior articles, and analyzes the degree of those articles’ success ion advancing knowledge regarding the topic.

While the selection of the small number of articles required for this paper does not provide for an authoritative representation of the wide range of research currently underway in your field — or of the kind of research required for published papers in the field — your careful search for and analysis of articles in your field will provide you with a helpful sense of what academic writing in your field looks like.  Along with gaining practice in reading such articles for your own future research, you will also gain an understanding of what conventions or unwritten/unspoken expectations to follow when you write in your own field.  In other words, you will gain a better understanding of what is expected when you write in the rhetorical situation that is particular to your field.

Using the search tools and techniques that you have been learning about through the Library tutorials, you are to find four peer-reviewed scholarly articles on your topic.  Once you have done so, you will discuss each article’s content, including quotes that convey a sense of each article’s style and sensibility.  Be sure to develop your sense of the similarities and differences between and among the articles that you have found, in terms of aspects like writing style, use of sources, length, and organization.  It is also important that you explain your sense of the rhetorical situation (audience, context, and purpose) for each article; different scholarly journals, even though they are dedicated to the same general field of knowledge, can be very different from one another in terms of audience, context, and purpose.  Additionally, you should be sure to let your reader know which article(s) you found to be most successful and effective, and why.

It will also be important that you think about how you want to organize your literature review.  Some scholars like to proceed chronologically, starting with the oldest of their articles and proceeding forward toward the most recent, in order to demonstrate how the history of ideas has changed over time in their field.  Other scholars prefer to show how different articles exemplify conflict and/or convergence between two, or among more than two, dominant schools of thought or theoretical frameworks in their field.  Ultimately, of course, how you choose to organize the literature review is up to you.

By reviewing scholarly articles about the topic, you can demonstrate how your proposed research fills a gap in existing knowledge regarding the topic.  How have other researchers approached the topic, and how does your approach offer something new?  When you look at what other scholars have said about your topic, you are conducting a literature review.  A strong literature review enhances your own credibility as a scholar.  You may want to conclude your literature review by discussing how your plans for conducting your own research may have changed or remained consistent since the research proposal.

Your Literature Review should include a Works Cited or References list.