Assignment instructions
Draft the introduction of your literature review.
Your introduction should:
Begin with an engaging hook to grab the reader's attention.
Introduce the topic of your paper
Describe the scope of the review
Explain the importance of what your review is doing
End with a purpose statement .
Part 3
Summary and Synthesis
Looking at the sources you have gathered and read, in your own words, summarize and synthesize the key findings relevant to your study from your research in 1-2 paragraphs. Consider the following questions about the field as a whole:
What do we know about the immediate area?
What are the key arguments, key characteristics, key concepts or key figures?
What are the existing debates/theories?
What common methodologies are used?
Sample Language for Summary and Synthesis:
Normadin has demonstrated…
Early work by Hausman, Schwarz, and Graves was concerned with…
Elsayed and Stern compared algorithms for handling…
Additional work by Karasawa et. al, Azadivar, and Parry et. al deals with…
Example of Summary and Synthesis:
Under the restriction of small populations, four possible ways [to avoid premature convergence] were presented. The first one is to revise the gene operators…. Griffiths and Miles applied advanced two-dimensional gene operators to search the optimal cross-section of a beam and significantly improve results. The second way is to adjust gene probability. Leite and Topping adopted a variable mutation probability and obtained an outperformed result…
Questions to think about for your review
1) Is the literature review organized chronologically or by topic? Are you clear about which approach is being used in the review?
2) Do you use headings or paragraph breaks to show distinctions in the groups of studies under consideration?
3) Do you explain why certain groups of studies are being reviewed by drawing a clear connection to the topic?
4) Do you make clear which of the studies described are most important?
5) Do you cover all important areas of research related to the topic?
6) Do you use transitions and summaries to move from one study or set of studies to the next?
7) By the end of the literature review, is it clear why the current research is necessary?
Questions To Ask Yourself As You Write
1) Does the review mention flaws, gaps, or shortcomings of specific studies or groups of studies?
2) Do you point out areas that have not yet been researched or have not yet been researched sufficiently?
3) Does the review demonstrate a change over time or recent developments that make your research relevant now?
4) Do you discuss research methods used to study this topic and/or related topics?
