Teaching the Literature Review: A Practical Approach for College Instructors

Abstract

Instructors across the disciplines require their students to write literature reviews. Although numerous sources describe the literature review process, instructors and students face difficulty when approaching the structure of a literature review. This paper presents a straightforward, efficient approach for teaching students how to write a literature review. Developed over the course of three years at a university writing center, this lesson received substantial support from students across the disciplines. This paper reflects on one group of students' experiences while writing literature reviews in a po liti cal science course, showing that students demonstrated a sense of confidence and direction after the lesson. University professors, writing center staff, and content-discipline instructors in higher edu-cation classrooms can alleviate their students' anxiety about literature reviews by using this lesson in their classrooms. Tutor: What does the term " literature review " mean to you? Jessica: God, I don't know. I don't have sense of structure. It's a synthesis and summary, I know that. Dylan: You explain and describe the recent theories and something like that. I don't know, man. I guess I talk about specific details and things. But how far do I go? I mean, that could take forever. I worked at the writing center of a major university for several years. Students who sought my assistance of en requested help on how to write a literature review that had been assigned by one of their instructors. At the beginning of our one-on-one, 50-minute session, I of en asked the student to define a literature review. The students' [pseudonyms] responses above are typical of what I heard—confusion and uncertainty. Therefore, my task as a writing tutor was first to demystify student misunderstandings toward the litera-ture review and sec ond to teach them to write a coherent, thoughtful review. Literature reviews are a common writing assignment in four-year university courses, junior college courses, and graduate education (Ridley, 2008); however, the process