Having discussed the foundation of the literature review in the formative blogs, we can further discuss the important components of a good literature review.
Create sub heads of the collected content for the LR: you must know the main themes that you will be breaking down your literature review into. Whatever material that you have collected, you must stack it up under the correct subhead. There may be some content that you wouldn’t know where to place that is ok. Keep them aside and leave them for the ends rather than discarding them. At the end of this task you may be able to place them better. When you finish segregating all the content into its relevant stack you will get the idea of how much weight you have allocated to each sub theme and whether it is worth it or no.
Design your conceptual schema: all the sub heads that you have created in the previous stage must be organised in a sequential manner, they must go well with each other for which you need to put up ideas that go together under one head and ideas that contradict each other at a more appropriate place. Sequencing out the sub heads is going to help you to create the chapterization pattern to add a sense of connectivity between the ideas and as the reader goes through the chapter from the beginning to the end, he is able to graduate in his understanding and learning of the concepts in a smooth manner.
Start paraphrasing: when you have put up each thing to where it belongs, you need to now give it your writing so you got to actually start beginning to write your literature review. You can start from any of the subheads, it won’t matter. In fact it is always better to start from a section you are most comfortable with or the one that excites you the most. At this stage, you must not forget to put the citations while you are paraphrasing the content. If you procrastinate the citation work for the end you aren’t doing anything but inviting trouble for yourself. After you have completed the paraphrasing task of all the sections, you have accomplished a big stage in your literature review
By the end of this stage you would have completed the first draft stage of your literature review. Congratulations it isn’t any less than a milestone.
