Tips for writing a Literature Review
Now that your group has selected a topic and has had a chance to research that topic, you have probably decided upon your Statement of Problem, your hypothesis and your proposed experimental procedure. As a group you should have at least five sources to report on. Each of your sources should have provided you with some information about your topic. In the Literature Review you will relate this information to your reader. Below you will find a format for the Literature Review that you should follow when working in the GoogleDocs document titled Sci.Proj. Template:
Literature Review
First Paragraph: Introduce the project. Explain to the reader the question you will be answering and briefly describe your experiment (in future tense). Why were you interested in this topic? Describe to the reader the type of information that you were looking for in your research (basic background information [be specific], if any one else had performed similar experiments, etc...)Next Paragraph: Describe the type of search that you did--did you find books on your topic around your house ? Did you perform an exhaustive search in all libraries within fifty miles of your home? Did you search for magazine articles or newspaper articles? What kinds of electronic (computer) searches did you do? What were your key search words and how productive were these efforts? Did you rely on interviews for some of your research? Did you rely on information from manufacturers, corporations, utilities etc...? Did you speak with other students who had performed similar experiments in the past? Did you have any difficulties finding the type of information that you needed? If so, why do you think that was the case? If there was more time available, where else might you have searched for more information?
The bulk of the Review of Literature should be used to relate to your reader the information that was obtained as a result of your research efforts. At least one paragraph should be allowed for each source, but some sources will require more space than that. Mention each article or book by title and mention the author’s name. Describe the information that the source provided and explain to the reader why that information was valuable or important to your project.
The Final Paragraph: Use the final paragraph to briefly summarize the results of your research, and subtly remind your reader what question you are trying to answer.
Arrange all of your sources into a Works Cited format (using NoodleBib) and include it at the end of your written report.
