6. Writing the Literature Review

The King brought the miller’s daughter to a chamber that was piled high with straw and gave her a spinning wheel and a reel. “Now set to work,” he said. “And if between tonight and tomorrow at dawn you have not spun this straw into gold, you must die.”
—“Rumplestiltskin,” Grimm’s Fairy Tales

IN THE CHILDREN’S STORY “Rumplestiltskin,” a greedy king locks a miller’s daughter in a room filled to the ceiling with straw. The king tells her that she has one night to spin all the straw into gold and that if she fails in this task, she will be killed. In utter despair and in complete confusion about how or where to begin, the Miller’s daughter cries and wails until the gnome Rumplestiltskin comes to her rescue and performs the task for her.

The plight of the Miller’s daughter can be compared to the situation that confronts many graduate students when they attempt to write a literature review for a thesis or dissertation. In exploring and discovering a topic, they have found many sources from books, journals, theses, newspapers, and more. Piles of these materials are stacked all around, on desks, tables, and floor, and they have diligently read their way through most of them, taking copious notes—computers bulge with information and threaten to explode. But having found all this “stuff,” students are at a loss about how to organize it for a literature review. Which ones should be included? How should the review be structured? How much information should be included? What is the role of a literature review in developing a thesis or dissertation?

This chapter discusses the literature review as a genre, focusing on its purpose within a thesis or dissertation and on its role in enabling the writer to enter the disciplinary conversation. It also suggests strategies for working with sources and taking notes, to avoid “source loss”—a situation in which a writer loses bits of information needed for accurate documentation.

The Literature Review and the Writer, Reader, Text Relationship

If you input the term “literature review” into an online search engine, you will find several definitions of its components, and you might want to do this to obtain a variety of perspectives. Whatever definitions you find, however, it is important to consider them in the context of the writer/reader/text relationship, which is the underlying concept of this book. For example, the University of California, Santa Cruz, defines the literature review as follows:

[A] literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

This definition, although correct in many ways, does not discuss the literature review in terms of the interaction between the writer (you, the graduate student writing a thesis or dissertation), the intended audience (your thesis advisor and the scholarly community), and the text (the thesis or dissertation), which, as was discussed in Chapter 3, “The Proposal as an Argument: A Genre Approach to the Proposal,” is a type of argument). In the context of writing a thesis or dissertation, then, I define the literature review in this way:

A Literature Review surveys scholarly articles, books, and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a topic for a thesis or dissertation. Its purpose is to demonstrate that the writer has insightfully and critically surveyed relevant literature on his or her topic in order to convince an intended audience that this topic is worth addressing.

Defining the literature review in these terms is to understand it as a means of entering the scholarly conversation. For that purpose, the literature review, like the thesis or dissertation as a whole, can be viewed as a form of argument. Its goal is to demonstrate that you, the writer, have the necessary background to explore the topic you have chosen. By surveying existing literature critically and insightfully, you are justifying your choice for your intended audience and establishing the direction your thesis/dissertation will follow.

An Example of How a Literature Review Serves an Argumentative Purpose

In many theses and dissertations, the literature review is a chapter unto itself. However, due to limits of space, I cannot include in this book an entire literature review chapter from a thesis or dissertation to use as an example. What I can discuss, however, is an example from a published article, which often fulfills a similar function—to demonstrate that the writer is familiar with existing relevant literature, to justify the choice of topic, and thereby to enter the scholarly conversation.

A clearly written example of how a literature review fulfills an argumentative function is found in an article entitled “Teaching Genre to English First-Language Adults: A Study of the Laboratory Report,” published in the May 2004 issue of Research in the Teaching of English. In that article, the authors, Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe, address the question of whether written genres can be learned through explicit teaching or can only be acquired implicitly by writing within a discipline. Their article reports on research on teaching the genre of the laboratory report to first-language university students in biology labs. Their introduction, reprinted here, consists of a “Review of the Literature” that is used to justify their study. Read this review and write a one-sentence summary of each paragraph, focusing on what each paragraph does. You should also examine the organizational structure and note how the sources were summarized and referenced. Analyzing the structure of this introduction will give you a sense of how the literature review accomplishes its intended purpose. Although there is no “right” way to organize a literature review, examining a sample such as this suggests possibilities.

Title: “Teaching Genre to English First-Language Adults: A Study of the Laboratory Report”

Introduction

1. The persistent controversy attending the teaching of genre was brought to the fore by a set of articles published in RTE outlining opposing positions on the question of whether or not genre can be explicitly taught. Freedman (1993) argued that because genre knowledge is generally tacit and is acquired subconsciously in the contexts in which it is used, the explicit teaching of genres is not necessary, largely not possible, and perhaps even harmful. Williams and Colomb (1993) and Fahnestock (1993) countered Freedman’s argument by pointing out that it is not always the case that context must precede and therefore determine the social forms of language for the context. They conclude that generic conventions can, therefore, be explicitly taught outside the contexts in which the conventions are applied. This exchange, however, has by no means put the matter to rest (e.g., Freedman 1999; Christie, 1999).
2. The issue is made more complex in that there are three schools of thought concerning genre, each with its own set of assumptions about teaching genre (Hyon, 1996; see also Paltridge, 2001). English for specific purposes (ESP) is founded on the linguistic theories of John Swales (1986, 1990), particularly the application of structural move analysis, to describe broad organizational patterns in various genres for the instruction of adult nonnative speakers in academic and professional genres (Flowerdew, J., 1993; Henry & Roseberry, 2001; Salager-Meyer, 1990; Swales, 1981). Though the primary emphasis of this approach has been more on the analysis of genre rather than on the development of teaching strategies (Hyon, 1996), the grounding assumption is that genre can be explicitly taught (Bhatia, 1993; Flowerdew, L., 2000; Paltridge, 2001; Swales & Feak, 1994).
3. A somewhat similar position may be found in the Australian school of genre studies, based on the application of Michael Halliday’s (1978; Halliday & Hassan, 1989) systemic functional linguistics to teaching primary and secondary students, with particular emphasis on those who are nonnative speakers and/or economically disadvantaged (Callaghan, Knapp & Noble, 1993; Christie, 1992; Martin, 2000). This approach to genre offers well-designed pedagogies for explicitly teaching genre (Christie, 1989; Martin, 1989), in accord with arguments that genre can be explicitly learned (Christie, 1999; Hammond, 1987).
4. A third approach to genre, New Rhetorical or North American, traces its origins to Carolyn R. Miller’s (1984) understanding of genre as social action, a typified response to an often-repeated social situation. Scholarship in this area has been largely focused on ethnographic studies of generic contexts and the ways those contexts define and are defined by generic responses (Bazerman, 1988; Blakeslee, 1997; Devitt, 1991; Forman & Rymer, 1999). Because of their emphasis on generic contexts, advocates of the New Rhetorical approach tend to be skeptical that genre can be explicitly taught, arguing instead that genre knowledge must be acquired organically through active participation in authentic generic contexts (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Blakeslee, 2001; Freedman, 1993, 1999; Freedman, Adam, & Smart, 1994).
5. One of the key difficulties in answering the question of whether or not genre can be taught is that, as a number of researchers (e.g., Freedman, 1993; Henry & Roseberry, 1998; Hyon, 1996; Swales, 1990) have noted, there is little experimental research supporting either of the opposing assumptions. Studies of mainly English first-language (L1) primary-school children offer mixed conclusions (Chapman, 1995; Donovan, 2001; Kamberelis, 1999; Reppen, 1995; Wollman-Bonilla, 2000). Nunan’s (1992) large-scale assessment of the Australian Disadvantaged Schools Project showed that English second-language (L2) children in low socio-economic schools produced better writing with explicit teaching of genre than students without such teaching. Research focusing on English L2 adult students has suggested that explicit teaching of genre may have positive effects on reading (Hewings & Henderson, 1987; Hyon, 1995) and on writing (Mustafa, 1995; Henry & Roseberry, 1998), though it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from the latter pair of studies. Henry and Roseberry’s (1998) well-designed study, a control-group (quasi-random, pre- and post-test) experiment, showed significant improvement in two of the three variables tested to evaluate explicit teaching of a genre (travel brochure). Interestingly enough, however, the variable that showed no significant difference was the linguistic moves associated with the genre, even though these moves provided the primary basis for instruction.
6. In addition to being inconclusive as a whole, these studies of English L1 and L2 primary-school students and English L2 adults shed little light on the question of teaching genre to English L1 adults. It is certainly difficult to extrapolate from children’s learning to adult learning. And, as Grabe and Kaplan (1996) point out, L1 adults possess an implicit knowledge of genres in their language that L2 adults may not, suggesting that the latter may be more receptive to explicit teaching of genres in their second languages. Moreover, we have not been able to find any control-group experiments of teaching genre to English L1 adults. Thus, the debate initiated by Freedman in 1993 remains unresolved largely due to the lack of experimental research.
7. The study presented here does not definitively resolve the issue, but it does suggest a narrowing of the debate. We report a control-group experiment in which web-based instructional materials were used to teach the genre of laboratory reports to adult students in university biology laboratories. The results of this experiment indicate that genre can be taught effectively to English L1 adults within certain parameters.

(Carter, Michael, Ferzli, Miriam, and Eric Wiebe. “Teaching Genre to English First-Language Adults: A Study of the Laboratory Report.” Research in the Teaching of English, 38.4 [2004]: 395–419.)

This clearly structured introduction shows how a literature review functions within a thesis or dissertation. Here is my functional analysis of this introduction, which you can compare to your own:

The first paragraph in the introduction provides a historical overview of a controversy: whether or not genres can be taught explicitly (some scholars say “yes”; others say “no.”). The authors refer to the scholars who engaged in this controversy in 1993, briefly summarizing their conflicting positions.

In paragraph 2, the authors note further complexity in this issue because of three schools of thought concerning genre, each with its own set of assumptions about whether it can be taught explicitly. They discuss the English for Specific Purposes approach in this paragraph and summarize the other two approaches in paragraphs 3 and 4.

In paragraph 5, the authors note a further difficulty in answering the overall research question: the fact that there is little experimental research on this topic. They then summarize the major studies involving L1 and L2 children and L2 adults (the L refers to “language”). Then, in paragraph 6, they note a further gap in the literature: the fact that there have been no studies attempting to teach genre to L1 adults.

These six paragraphs prepare for the seventh, in which the goals of the research study are presented. Essentially, this concluding paragraph states, “Because there is a need (which we have established in the first six paragraphs), we have conducted an experimental study, and here is what we have found.”

Exercise 1:Find an article in your discipline and analyze a section in which relevant literature is reviewed. How does the review demonstrate the qualifications of the author(s)? How does it justify the choice of topic and serve as a means of entering the scholarly conversation?

Exercise 2:Find a thesis or dissertation on the topic you plan to address in your own work. How is it similar to and different from the review in the published article you found in Exercise 1?

Exercise 3:The literature review analyzed earlier is concerned with a conflict—whether or not genres can be explicitly taught. Is there a conflict of perspectives in the topic you plan to address? Can you use this conflict to justify your choice of topic?

Questions Associated with a Literature Review

In planning your review, you might ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is my central question or issue that the literature can help define?
2. What is already known about the topic?
3. Is the scope of the literature being reviewed wide or narrow enough?
4. Is there a conflict or debate in the literature?
5. What connections can be made between the texts being reviewed?
6. What sort of literature should be reviewed? Historical? Theoretical? Methodological? Quantitative? Qualitative?
7. What criteria should be used to evaluate the literature being reviewed?
8. How will reviewing the literature justify the topic I plan to investigate?

Key Terms Associated with a Literature Review

The function of a literature review can also be understood through several key terms that you might reflect on as you write:

• Compare and contrast—You might compare and contrast different authors’ views on an issue.

• Criticize—You might criticize methodology or perspectives in previous work, thereby showing the importance of your own.

• Highlight—You might highlight gaps in existing research.

• Show—You might show how your study relates to previous literature and is superior in some way.

• Identify—You might identify a problem, conflict, debate, or gap in the literature.

• Define—You might define a research area in a new way.

• Question—You might question the results of previous work.

Writing the Literature Review

Expect to Write Several Drafts

When should you start to write a literature review? I suggest that you begin a preliminary review as soon as you have an idea for your thesis or dissertation topic because the act of writing will enable you to gain a deeper understanding of what you are reading. But because you will not be an expert in your field right at the beginning of your exploration, it may take several years before you thoroughly understand work that you read earlier in your career. You should therefore expect to rewrite the review later in your studies, when you have acquired a deeper insight into your topic and are in a position to evaluate what you have read. You may have to rewrite it several times.

A qualification to that statement is that in some disciplines, institutions, and countries, particularly in the United Kingdom, students begin to work on a dissertation topic right at the beginning of their graduate studies. If you are a graduate student in such a program, the process of writing a literature review will be necessarily shortened.

Discovering Structure

A literature review is a well-developed reasoned text. It is not a list that describes or summarizes one text after another, and it is usually not a good sign if you find yourself beginning each paragraph with the name of the author or title of the work. Determining an effective structure, however, can sometimes be a challenge. When students initially write a literature review, it sometimes resembles an annotated bibliography rather than a review—that is, it summarizes the information in each article or book but doesn’t link it to the overall direction of the thesis/dissertation or connect it with other works on a similar topic. Often it is organized chronologically simply because chronological structure is easy to use. Students also might keep adding studies as they read them, without integrating them into the work as a whole.

Unless developments over time are significant to the topic you are investigating, a chronological approach may not suit your purpose, and a simple add-on approach is unlikely to have much structure at all. The best structure is the one that enables you to focus on the issues you are addressing and to highlight the findings in the literature. The literature review analyzed earlier began the discussion by noting a conflict in the literature, discussed different approaches to the topic as noted in the literature, and eventually highlighted a gap in existing research. In that review, the literature concerned with the conflict and the gap led to the statement of what the study was about.

Of course, this is not the only way to structure a literature review, and you may have to try different organizational schemes before you discover the one that best suits your needs. Rewriting the review can be frustrating, but it is usually necessary if you want it to fulfill its function effectively. The following is another example of a review from a published article, which uses a different pattern than the one analyzed earlier. In this article, “Ethnic Preferences and Ethic Perceptions in Multi-Ethnic Settings,” the statement of purpose precedes the Literature Review, a conceptual structure that may be more appropriate to your discipline than the example from the “genre” article. Using this pattern, the author is saying, in essence: “This is what my article is about. And the literature I cite sets a context for that statement.”

Title: “Ethnic Preferences and Ethic Perceptions in Multi-Ethnic Settings”

[B]ecause of the changing demographic context, race and ethnicity continue to dominate both social discourse and political behavior in United States society. America at the beginning of the 21st century is as dominated by concerns with race as it was in the era immediately before and after the civil rights years of the 1960s. But while 30 years ago the moral high ground was held by those who argued that American society as a whole must redress the past wrongs of slavery and discrimination, now, if there is a moral high ground, it is a contest battlefield with many and conflicting voices. In this context, how can we move forward to an understanding of what is, and should be, the role of race and ethnicity in an increasingly mixed and spatially diverse society? Should we welcome the “end of racism” and distinctions based on race (D’Souza, 1995), or should we enlarge and strengthen the role of the government in the continuing 40-year attempt to create an integrated society? There are important questions that can be debated within the context of ethnocentrism and the continuing evidence of strongly held own race residential preferences. This paper reviews the debate about the causes of continuing separation of racial and ethnic groups and links separation and ethnocentrism. The paper argues that ethnocentrism is a powerful and important force in creating the structure of the urban mosaic. To ignore this force is to downplay the role of preferences and to overplay the role of discrimination rather than emphasizing the complexity of racial and ethnic relations.

The Debate About Race and Residential Separation

There is an ongoing debate in the research literature about the reasons for the continuing separation of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. That debate has been especially contentious with respect to the relative roles of economics, preferences and discrimination as competing explanations for the segregation that continues in the large metropolitan areas of the United States (Clark, 1986, 1989; Farley, 1997; Galster, 1988, 1989; Zubrinsky and Bobo, 1996). The debate has been particularly polarized about the role of preferences and ethnocentrism and whether patterns of mobility reflect the expressed preferences for various combinations of ethnic neighbors (St. John, 1996). While there is evidence that racial discrimination and prejudice are still factors in everyday U.S. life (Yinger, 1995), there is also evidence that there have been real gains in race relations (Schuman, Steeh and Bob, 1985). Moreover, it is clear that the racism of the last decade of the 20th century is very different from the racism of the racial exclusion acts of the 1920s. Unfortunately, much of the language about race and racism harkens back to past positions of Black and White relationships, and says little about a changed ethnic mix. Current thinking seems still to be set in past debates about discriminatory behavior by Whites against African Americans and by extension to Whites and other ethnic groups. The debate has only tangentially addressed the important and increasingly powerful role of multicultural ethnocentrism and the complexity of racial and ethnic relationships amongst more than two ethnic or racial groups.

(Clark, William A.V. “Ethnic Preferences and Ethnic Perceptions in Multi-Ethnic Settings.” Urban Geography, 2002, 23:3, 237–256.)

This article, then, begins by raising the question of why races and ethnicities tend to live separately from one another, a question which leads to a statement of purpose: to argue that ethnocentrism is a powerful and important force in creating the pattern of where people live. The literature review then follows, discussing the various scholarly debates on this topic.

Question:Examine several articles in your discipline. Then find an example of a thesis or dissertation that is similar to the one you plan to write. Is the pattern of reviewing the literature similar to the “genre” article or to the one on race and ethnicity? Does it use a different form altogether?

Taking Notes and Minimizing “Source Loss”

Chapter 4, “Mapping Texts: The Reading/Writing Connection,” discussed strategies that foster critical or rhetorical reading. In this chapter, I apply them to the process of organizing and keeping track of materials for writing a literature review. The goal is to make your notes as useful as possible for you when you write and to enable you to avoid or at least minimize “source loss.” Source loss occurs when you have referred to a particular source and perhaps included it in your literature review or elsewhere in your thesis or dissertation, but you didn’t write down part or all of the bibliographical information you need. Sometimes the loss is minimal, a missing page number or an author’s first initial. Still, you have to relocate the source and skim through it, looking for the referenced text. But sometimes students forget to write down anything about a source to which they want to refer. Then there is a big problem as students try to reconstruct what they were reading, in order to locate the missing source. Be as careful as possible when you take notes, even though the process seems unnecessarily time-consuming. The strategies suggested here can help. But, of course, if you have a system that works well for you, by all means, continue to use it. “Order,” like “beauty,” is sometimes in the eyes of the beholder. One of my colleagues has an office that is piled with books, papers, and boxes—to me it looks like a serious mess. But somehow he can always find what he is looking for. For him, the mess has an order that is imperceptible to everyone else.

A Two-Pass Approach to Examining Sources

A common mistake graduate students often make is that they try to read every word of every source that is remotely related to their topic. If you are one of these students, you will find that the reading process will never end because the process takes an inordinate amount of time, and there is always more to read. In writing a literature review, keep in mind that it is not intended to summarize every text that relates to your topic—only those that are considered most relevant and significant to the direction you are pursuing.

The two-pass approach to examining sources will enable you to evaluate the credibility of the articles and books you read so that you can decide whether to use them in your literature review. Here is an overview of the process:

The First Pass: Previewing the Text

During the first pass, try to obtain a quick overview of the text. Consider the context of the scholarly conversation, decide whether the text is addressing a controversy, and see if you can figure out the author’s purpose. Look at clues that provide this information, such as the title, publication information, abstracts, introductions, headings, results, conclusions, and easily discernible strategies of organization. If the source is an article, look for statements of purpose on the first two pages. If the source is a book, examine the table of contents and chapter headings. Briefly skim the introduction and conclusion. See if you can write a predictive summary of what the main point or perspective of this source might be.

As the writer of a thesis or dissertation, it is important that you learn to preview texts so that you don’t waste time reading material that you ultimately will not use.

The Second Pass: Interacting with the Text

During the second pass, attempt to interact with the text by engaging in a critical dialogue with it. Your goal is to determine how much of it to accept, determine its value, and decide whether you plan to include it in your literature review. Such interaction involves evaluating the credibility of the author, examining theoretical or methodological premises, probing for perhaps unstated underlying assumptions, and assessing the type of evidence or support that is used. Do you agree with the method or approach? Does the author seem biased? Can this source be linked to others that address a similar topic or direction?

During this second pass, you will be reading more carefully. But even so, don’t attempt to read every sentence. See if you can focus on the central argument of the text and make some tentative predictions.

Keeping Track of Sources

It is difficult to keep track of everything one reads. I don’t think I have ever written an article or book that didn’t require me to go hunting for a lost page number or author’s name somewhere. So many texts! So many ideas! So many pieces of paper! How does one manage not to lose necessary information? Here are a few suggestions:

Number and List Sources on a Source List

My first suggestion is to number every source you read and keep a list of each one. This idea may seem like a lot of extra work in the beginning, but at the end, when you are writing your “Works Cited” or “References” section, you will be delighted that all the bibliographical information is listed so accurately, and you will be able to paste it in directly.

Here is an example of a source list:

Source List

1. Freedman, A. (1993). “Show and Tell? The Role of Explicit Teaching in Learning New Genres.” Research in the Teaching of English 27, 222–51.
2. Devitt, A. J. (1997). “Genre as Language Standard.” In Bishop, W., and H. Ostrom (Eds.), Genre and Writing: Issues, Arguments, Alternatives. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/ Cook, 45–55.
3. Williams, J., & G. G. Colomb. (1993). “The Case for Explicit Teaching: Why What You Don’t Know Won’t Help You.” Research in the Teaching of English 27(3), 252–264.

Of course, you can also construct a list without using numbers. But numbers can help you remember the order in which you read a particular source and are especially useful when you have several sources by the same author. For example, if I want to reference three sources by Freedman, numbering each one allows me to distinguish them, especially if they were written in the same year. In the previous example, I have written my sources using the APA documentation system, enabling me to paste each citation into my “References” section when I am ready to compile it. If I were working in a discipline that used MLA, I would write my list in that system. Another safeguard against source loss is to use the numbers as well as the name of the source when you refer to it in your literature review or elsewhere in your thesis or dissertation. In a reference to Devitt in a draft of a literature review, for example, I might write “#1 Devitt” and then the appropriate page number.

Do not underestimate how difficult it is to keep track of the many sources you will be reading. Even a highly organized person experiences source loss from time to time. The good news is that although the task of finding a missing source can be frustrating and time consuming, usually the source can be found.

Taking Notes

The sources you use for your literature review will consist of many different types of texts—books, articles, interviews, journals, online sources. Some of these texts may be your own property, such as books you have purchased, journals to which you subscribe, or articles you have photocopied. But, of course, you are unlikely to own all the books you use, and you probably have not photocopied every article you have read. So how do you take notes about these sources so that you can recall their major points easily and incorporate their ideas into your literature review?

For the texts they own, many students like to use a highlighter to call attention to significant ideas they want to remember. I suggest, however, that whether or not you own a text and whether or not you like to use a highlighter, you take actual notes—preferably on the computer. Highlighting may seem a quick way to focus attention on text you want to remember or include, but after you have read a great deal, you may have difficulty locating specific points or quotations when you begin to write your literature review. Highlighting may seem like a good way to save time, and, certainly, you can use your highlighter to focus attention on important sections of the text. But if you supplement the highlighting with actual notes, you will have an easier time when you begin to write your literature review.

Students often ask whether they should take many or a few notes, and, of course, it really depends on the particular source and the amount of detail you find valuable in it. In general, I suggest taking slightly more notes than you think you will need. Often when you begin reading, you may not be quite sure of your topic, and you may refocus your thesis later to include aspects you hadn’t considered in the beginning. As you move along in your research, you might discover that you need those additional notes after all.

How should you record your notes? Some students, having been taught in school to use note cards, still prefer to use this method. Note cards are easy to sort and, because they provide only limited room for writing, they can aid students in breaking down a topic into manageable parts. If you are in the habit of using note cards and find them an effective method for recording information, by all means, continue to use them—or any other system you have constructed for yourself.

My own experience suggests, however, that taking notes usually requires more room than a note card provides and that part of the note-taking process includes jotting down ideas about how this note might be useful. I like to record these ideas as they occur to me, writing them down right next to the note. Therefore, I need more room for writing than a note card allows. In general, I recommend taking notes on the computer and then printing them. You can then place them in folders, organized either by author’s last name or by subject. If you don’t always have access to a computer, I suggest a notebook with detachable pages. Then you can file the notes appropriately.

You can use two types of sheets for taking notes, the Source Sheet, which is used for recording notes about a single source, and the Synthesis Sheet, which is used to organize information about one aspect of a topic and may include notes from several sources.

The Source Sheet

A Source Sheet is used to record notes about a single source. It includes a summary of the source and contains information obtained from that particular source. A Source Note Sheet helps you record your notes easily, and you can also use it to prepare your bibliography because you can alphabetize these sheets. You can use your computer to prepare a form for this sheet if you decide to work directly at the computer. If you prefer to work in hard copy, you can create copies of this sheet and fasten them into a notebook.

The following is a sample of a Source Sheet. The topic concerns whether new genres can or should be taught explicitly.

In listing an author’s name, you should begin with the last name so that you can easily alphabetize the sheets to create your bibliography. Note that there is also a section for a brief summary of your source so that you can remember what its overall purpose was. This is particularly useful if you want to compare different points of view on an aspect of your topic. It also forces you to think about what the main purpose of a source actually is (in some articles, this can be difficult to do). Note also that there is a space allotted for writing down the page number, a very important piece of information.

In the section marked “Notes” on the Source Sheet, you can either paraphrase an idea you want to remember or write it down as an exact quote. If it is an exact quote, remember to put quotation marks around it so that you can document it properly when you write your review. Note also the section of the Source Sheet marked “Idea About Note.” Under that column, you are essentially asking yourself the question, “What am I going to do with this note?” As you read, you will get ideas that you cannot pursue immediately, and you may not remember them if you don’t write them down. You may think to yourself, “This would provide a good argument against that other article I read.” So you might write “Compare with [name] article.” Or you may think, “This is a good example of....” Use this space to jot down ideas as they occur to you.

The Note Synthesis Sheet

The Note Synthesis Sheet is useful for organizing notes around a particular aspect of a topic, enabling you to compare perspectives from several sources. It includes enough information from each source so that you can incorporate it into your review with relative ease.

Here is an example of how a Note Synthesis Sheet can be used to compare perspectives on the explicit teaching of genre:

Writing the literature review is an important element in writing a thesis or dissertation, in that it helps focus your thinking about what you are trying to accomplish in the work as a whole and enables you to enter the scholarly conversation. Using some of the strategies discussed here will help you avoid the problems students often experience in writing the literature review, particularly these:

1. They try to include every work they have read.Although you may feel that the effort you expended in reading all these texts should justify their inclusion in the literature review, you should include only those that pertain directly to your topic and justify the approach you plan to develop in your thesis or dissertation.
2. They write lists of works, summarizing each one without relating them to the overall focus of the thesis or dissertation.This structure does not enable the literature review to fulfill its function—to justify the approach to the topic and develop a rationale for exploring it.
3. They don’t keep accurate notes and lose track of bibliographic information.At the beginning stages of writing a thesis or dissertation, students are often so focused on finding and developing a topic that they scribble notes carelessly, lose pages, and then find themselves missing important information when they have to write their “Works Cited” or “References” pages. Then they have to go to the library and attempt to track down all the missing sources, going back over their writing to figure out which information came from each source. To minimize source loss, you might experiment with some of the strategies discussed in this chapter or develop one of your own.

If you are now at the point of beginning your literature review, you might also take another look at those in theses and dissertations that are related to your topic. Perhaps they will suggest possibilities for further reading, or they may adhere to an organizational pattern that would work well for you. And keep your momentum going. Rumplestiltskin may have finished the job in one night. But for most of us, creating order from a large pile of material usually takes a lot more time.