ENG 500 Research Methods: Rhetoric and Composition
Fall 2007
Review of Literature Assignment
A review of the literature (prior scholarship in the area(s) covered by your research problem, question, or hypothesis) helps you to identify what has been done and how it has been done as well as what remains to be done in your research area. As such, it serves several important functions. It can help you:
In addition to research studies (i.e., empirical research, or other kind of scholarship, relevant to your topic) also review opinion pieces (e.g., an article debating the validity of a particular study or approach) and methods pieces (e.g., sources that explain and justify particular methods related to the kind of methods you plan to use). If your research area warrants it, you might also review historical pieces, theoretical pieces, and textual analysis pieces. As a way to limit yor review, use a ten-year span from the present unless your project is meant to provide a historical overview of your topic. In general, you are looking for current available research.
Your search of the literature will probably uncover one or more of the following: some consistent patterns found by other researchers, discrepancies among researchers as to the meaning, value and significance of the patterns, discrepancies among the patterns themselves, competing or contradictory claims, conclusions or findings, or a lack of research either in terms of focus or methods (i.e., the “gap” in which to situate your own work). You will need to deal with any discrepancies in your written review of the literature. Here is where good notes are crucial. See the handout Heuristic for Taking Notes for a Research Project for suggestions.
Writing the Review of Literature
Your written review of the literature helps to situate your research problem within a general body of prior scholarship. In many instances, it also serves to instruct readers who may not be too familiar with your particular line of research. Taken together, a review of the literature serves both an argumentative (or persuasive) and a didactic function.
Before planning and writing this essay, it may be helpful to examine the journal Review of Education Research, for models of reviews of literature. For other examples, see:
DiPardo, Anne, and Sarah Warshauer Freedman. “Peer Response Groups in the Writing Classroom: Theoretical Foundations and New Directions.” Review of Educational Research 58 (1988): 119--49.
Harsanyi, Martha A. “Multiple Authors, Multiple Problems—Bibliometrics and the Study of Scholarly Collaboration: A Literature Review.” Library and Information Science Research 15 (1993): 325-354.
Hudson, Thom. “Theoretical Perspectives on Reading.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 18 (1998): 43-60.
Spivey, Nancy Nelson. “Construing Constructivism: Reading Research in the United States.” Poetics 16 (1987): 169-92.
Although the above review essays are generally more comprehensive than what you will write, they nevertheless offer excellent examples of how research literature is synthesized and presented; in other words, these examples demonstrate the delicate balance between the twin purposes of persuading and teaching.
Also review the introductions to the studies we are reading in this class and those of scholarly pieces you are reading in your research area to see how other researchers have reviewed the relevant literature (prior scholarship) to provide a frame for their studies.
You will probably want to organize your discussion around several sub-topics, for which you usually will discuss in detail at least two or three studies that are most relevant and methodologically sound. If other studies produced similar results, you can simply summarize these in one sentence (e.g., “X's findings have been supported by other studies that employed essentially the same approach” (then name the sources). Avoid simply stringing together a series of isolated summaries of the research studies. In the process of synthesizing the findings, you need to interpret their meaning or significance (either you can repeat what the research says about these or you can disagree with the researcher and explain why). Also avoid relying too heavily on quotations (unlike other kinds of scholarship, what the author found or argues is more important than what s/he said and how s/he said it). To identify the “sub-topics,” examine your research question(s) closely, noting the kinds of scholarly areas or research topics embedded in it.
Once you have identified one or more topics to research in the literature, you might try to locate reviews of literature other scholars have done on the topic(s). These provide a useful starting point for developing a working bibliography.
Relation of Research Question to Review of Literature : Some researchers begin their review with their research questions as a way of focusing on a particular area. Others use the review of literature as way to prepare the reader for, and along the way to argue for, their research questions. Still others never actually state their question(s), but imply them through their treatment of the research. Whatever you choose, your reader needs to understand the research question(s) that are guiding your study.
Requirements: Review at least 15-20 sources and limit your essay to between 7-10 pages.