Literature Review Format: How to Write a Literature Review

Writing different kinds of essays is a part of every student life. By the time a student reaches high school, along with descriptive essay writing, persuasive writing and narrative writing, he/she would also be expected to write a literature review. A literature review can be done on any subject, be it science, history, literature, etc. Writing a literature review does not require you to do primary research work (field work), rather you have to write a review based on the knowledge you have acquired on the subject by analyzing already existing research work on the subject. Here are some tips that would help you in writing a literature review in the correct literature review format.

How to Write a Literature Review?
The first step towards writing a literature review would be to select some already published literature works on a particular subject. For example, if you have selected literature as your subject, where you can choose a novel, short story or essay as your area of study. Once you do this, the next step would be to collect all the research material that has already been done by experts of the subject. You need not stick only to books for collecting information, rather you can also make use of the facilities offered by the Internet, where you can find all the information you want. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that all information that you have gathered are relevant as well as reliable.

Before writing the literature review, read every piece of literature related to your subject. It is important to acquire detailed information about every aspect of that particular subject. Once you feel that you have understood it very well, it is time to put your analysis on paper. Your review paper should be an amalgamation of the summary and critical review of related literature.

Literature Review Format
Before you start writing your literature review, it would be really beneficial if you create a literature review outline, where you have to chart out the way in which you would organize all the information that you have accumulated. After doing this, you can set out with your literature review. The literature review format that you have to follow is similar to that of the other essays. The literature review should begin with the thesis statement, where the student has to explain the central idea of the whole review in a sentence. This is followed by the introduction, main body which is divided into sub-parts for every new point and finally the conclusion.

The literature review should first summarize whatever knowledge you have gathered from the existing literature reviews. Followed by this would be the critical evaluation that you have done. This part should not include what other's have said about the particular subject, but your point of view. It should reflect your perspective and what you think about it. One should remember that every paragraph in the literature review should relate to the thesis statement given at the beginning.

While writing the literature review, one can mention some related literature reviews to explain or prove a point of view. However, it is important to acknowledge the fact that you have borrowed the idea from someone else. This is called documentation and an important part of literature review. The documentation method that you would have to follow could be different in different institutions. You may be asked to follow the APA style or the MLA style, according to which you have to prepare the bibliography and other required documentation.

Writing a literature review is a way of developing critical thinking skills. Knowing the literature review format well would definitely aid you in arranging the acquired information in an organized manner.