Alvian R.

Yanuardian
109684601

How to Write a Good Literature Review

Some students commonly find it difficult to find a state-of-the-art for their first
research. It happens because they do not start their research in a good way. A literature
review is one of the important parts for students before starting research. The purposes
of the literature review are as a guide for the research topic, to gather information to
answer the research questions, and to understand what people have done related to a
similar research question. For writing the literature review, there are 5 easy steps to
follow. Using this way, students hopefully can produce a novelty in their research.

The first step is making a strip of the summaries. This step will be divided into 2
parts; source citation and a detailed summary of it. The source citation will be put on the
last page of the literature review. At the beginning of detailed information must contain in-
text citation, thus people can easily know the source of the paragraph. On the other hand,
the detailed summary is contained important information from the sources and it will be
the main body of the literature review. People do not need to write detailed results, but
they only need to write the main idea from methods and important findings in general.

After students complete writing all of the source citations and detailed summaries,
they need to reorder the paragraphs and make them flow like a river. For making a good
order, students must re-read the paragraphs. At the same time, they need to find both
similarities and differences from the paragraphs. Subsequently, reorder the paragraphs
based on connections they find. However, students must understand that there is no one
universally correct sequence. The best sequence will be the one they find and apply
effectively. For example, there are paragraphs explain about the strategy or solution for
solving a problem. On the other hand, there are paragraphs that show the problems or
problems-need for understanding. After finding a clear pattern, they need to arrange the
problems first and then the solution.
 After that, students need to think about the content of the body paragraph and the
combination among paragraphs. For combining the paragraphs, there are 2 important
things. The first one is the close relation among paragraphs and the second is the limit
line of paragraphs when they are combined. If the paragraphs do not have strong relation,
otherwise they are problem or solution parts, they can be separated into different bodies
of paragraphs.

The next step is adding topic sentences and transitions. The topic sentence will be
put before the in-text citation and transitions. The idea of the topic sentence is coming
from the idea of the paragraph which will be explained. If there is more than 1 paragraph,
students need to make a topic sentence from their summary. One thing that must be done
is put a bridge sentence between 2 paragraphs which already come into 1. It will help
people who read it more easily to understand the relationship between each paragraph.

The final is adding the introduction, conclusion, and title. Within the introduction,
there is a thesis statement covering the main problems and solutions from previous
researches in a simple sentence. On the other hand, the conclusion will re-explain the
thesis statement from the introduction. Moreover, students can put their arguments
related to a gap in the research and the possibility for further research. For the title, it will
be written at the last because students need to understand the whole part of the literature
review first.

Each step in writing a literature review is essential. Starting from making a

summarizes, re-order the paragraph, making a body of the paragraph, adding topic
sentences, and transition within the paragraph, until writing the title. By following this
process, students hopefully can easily start writing a literature review.