How to review the literature

There are three things you should consider in reviewing the literature in Chapter 2.

1. Organization
How do you organize the ideas in Chapter 2? Begin this chapter by explaining the most general ideas, then write the more specific ideas. So the organization is: general --> specific.

For example, I wrote a thesis titled "The Use of Context Cues by the Students of English IKIP Malang in Reading Comprehension". The most general idea is reading comprehension, and the most specific one is context cues, so I organized Chapter 2 in this way:


2. Quoting, Paraphrasing & Summarizing
You have learned about them in the course Academic Writing 1, haven't you? Here is a little review:

• Don’t quote too much, only the sentences that you cannot paraphrase or summarize.
• Restate other authors’ ideas in your own words most of the time. (In other words, paraphrase most of the time.)
• If the texts are too long, summarize the ideas.

3. Taking Notes
Make notes directly as you read books, journal, papers, and theses/dissertations. Usually you read lots of them, so if you find a relevant idea and don't take notes immediately, you may forget which idea in which book.
Softwares are available to help you do this, such as Endnote. The use of cards is not recommended because:

• It takes longer time to make them.
• You use paper, which means more trees have to be cut down. This is not environmentally friendly.

Online resources

In my lectures I mentioned that you may quote relevant texts from online journals or conference proceedings. Here are some journals and proceedings that may be useful for your thesis writing.

Journals

The Internet TESL Journal

English Teaching Forum

Reading in a Foreign Language

The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language


Conference Proceedings

KOTESOL Conference Proceedings

AARE Conference Proceedings

Review of Literature

You have to review the literature when conducting research for some good reasons:

1. To define the frontiers of the field.
2. To place your research questions in perspective.
3. To limit your research questions and define the concepts of the study.
4. To understand the contradictory results in an area.
5. To choose the most appropriate methodology.
6. To avoid unintentional replication.
7. To help interpret the significance of the study.

Basically you review theories and previous studies which are relevant to the topic of your research. You could read them in the following scientific texts:
- books
- journals
- conference papers
- theses or dissertations

...BUT NOT the following popular texts:
- newspapers
- magazines
- encyclopedias

One of you asked me, "Can we quote resources from the internet?" Well, yes, you can. However, I usually allow my students to quote two types of online resources only: ebooks and ejournals. These two have been reviewed and edited by experts before being published online, so you could quote them. Quoting websites and blogs are strongly not recommended because no one reviewed the contents before they are published online.