Literature Review - hints and tips?

[ilythia]

So, I am a mathematician. I have never written lit reviews before this year.
I have done 2 and they were scrape passes, ie , shit but they'll do, these next 2 will be graded so ANY advice, hints, tips on the sort of thing I shoudl be aiming for.

It's the basic question, read review to form and answer and state opinions wouold be awesome thanks ladies

In my experience of writing a lit review, it should be a critical account of the relevant literature to your field. Firstly, I usually state what area I have included and why ie relevance to my research etc, thus giving the boundaries of the review. Then I take the lit articles and put them in themes. When I write the review it doesn't just say 'joe blogs said this and steve smith said that. It is more of a discussion of what these authors found and a critique of their methods, highlighting their omissions, but then contrasting their findings with the opposing group. The review will then (hopefully) highlight understudied areas from which you can formulate questions or opinions. It is a technique to learn and the main mistake made is to just provide an ordered list of what has been said and done, rather than a critically evaluation.

Hope this helps.

try and organise the different authors into logical groups, look at how they relate to each other. Sometimes I have marked lit reviews that have been one para about each one arranged apparently at random, when with a bit more thought (eg grouping together the ones that say basically the same thing) they could be so much more organised and easier to follow. Take the time to really plan it, it will pay off.

Oh thanks, that does help a bit. I am finding it really hard to go from the stage I am at (with notes and some relevant quotes for each author/s) to actually putting it on the paper!

We are just given titles and rough idea of what to do and left to get on with it, and our tutors don't seem conducive to looking at drafts, the gits. Others on teh course are from humanities backgrounds so they find this really simple and blast through them, I just think one lectire on 'how to write an essay' might help peopl, but of course they won't admit that people can get a degree without ever writing an essay