NU Library Research Guides: EDU Graduate Research: Lit Review Workshop

Research & Writing Help

This research guide provides resources to help you learn about, and complete, a literature review. If you have additional questions, please contact a librarian or Writing Center staff member for assistance. (Assistance is available for both on-campus and distance learners.)

To schedule an appointment with a Writing Center tutor, log-on to MyNU and click on the "Resources" tab. You can also call the Academic Success Center at 716-286-8073 or stop by their office on the first floor of Seton Hall. For online assistance, please email Sharon Green (sgreen@niagara.edu).

For library research assistance, visit the Research Help page. From here you can request an appointment, or contact a librarian via email, phone, and/or online chat.

Tutorial

Conducting a Literature Review
In this tutorial, you will learn about different types of research assignments. Please know that this tutorial will take about fifteen minutes to complete.

In your time at Niagara University, you will probably have an assignment to write a Literature Review. The exact structure can vary depending on the field, as well as the requirements that your instructor gives you. Here, we'll look at how a Lit Review is usually defined.

Get Lit: The Literature Review (video)

This video by the Director of the Texas A & M Writing Center explains how to research, organize and write a Literature Review depending on your discipline but with emphasis on Education majors. She explains the differences between a literature review for a standalone assignment and one in preparation for a dissertation. She also gives examples as she explains each of the steps.

Writing Guidelines

Writing a Literature Review: Some Guidelines
This handout by the Brooklyn College WAC office, together with their library, outlines the basic guidelines for writing a Literature Review including a definition, choosing your topic, researching, evaluating your sources, organizing your sources and your paper as well as language to use to show relationships between your sources and your topic as you synthesize your review.

Writing Exercises

Writing a Literature Review: Exercises
These exercises from the Yeditepe University Writing Center, School of Foreign Languages, provides practice in synthesizing sources to create a unified Literature Review. Exercise 1 provides excerpts regarding the use of direct and indirect feedback to second language learners to briefly summarize, including sources. Exercise 2 provides space to write out key ideas for each source and space to integrate the various viewpoints expressed in the excerpts. Exercise 3 pulls the three excerpts together leaving blanks to practice using relational phrases to connect the various points. This group of exercises also provides a key to check if you are working in the right direction.