Day 9: The narrative of a literature review

July 18, 2018

Over the next few videos, I'm going to focus exclusively on writing (because this is one of the most common things academics struggle with).Taking literature reviews, for example, just trying to summarize a huge mountain of literature won't work. But if you have an understanding of some basic principles of narrative then it becomes much easier.It's not about summarizing individual papers and what people did or said, but about understanding what the literature is responding to and using that to set up a context.The literature responds to two main things; the specific research problem or question and the existing literature around that problem.When you set up that context, everything else can find it's place (though of course there's a bit more to it than that).

See also:How to write a compelling literature review
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