This initial draft of your literature review should be a minimum of 5 pages in length and include at least 10 references.
The requirements for this literature review in terms of structure are as follows:
- Introduction
Your introduction will set the stage for establishing the research topic and appropriate sub areas for exploration. To establish the context, it is important to do the following in this opening paragraph:
a. Define the topic of your study and provide any background information that helps your reader to understand the topic.
b. Explain your reason (perspective) for reviewing the literature on this topic.
c. State your inquiry question(s) for this review.
- Body
- This section of your paper begins with an explanation of how you have organized your small-scale literature review and describes findings from articles that provide answers to your inquiry question. Consider the following components for organizing the body of the literature review:
a. Write an introduction paragraph for the body of your review. This
paragraph tells the reader specific information on how many articles you reviewed and how you sorted the articles into common themes based on the findings (results).
b. This will be the section that describes the first research question that you have identified.
c. This will be the section that describes the second research question that you have identified.
d. This will be the section that describes the third research question that you have identified.
- Summary
- Summarize the main findings of your research and point out important questions
- References
- A minimum of ten references in APA format
Be sure to do the following as you write:
- check for grammatical errrors and spelling
- follow APA guidelines in formatting, references, and citations.
- Synthesize your thoughts into your own words! Do not use direct quotes.
