Blog

Reviewing little bits of literature

A student contacted me by email today with this question:

I was looking for some guidance or templates on writing an academic review for sections of a text and/or an article.  Can you point me to any resources on the website that may be of assistance?

I thought that raised an interesting question, one that other doctoral candidates and emerging academic writers might have.

Here is what I responded:

There is no difference in how you would review a small section or a whole book.

In reviewing any kind of literature, you would identify themes, key points, write down useful quotes and paraphrases, and then summarise the work (say using the Cornell method).
In reviewing any kind of research, you would report on the strength of the argument. You would synthesise your findings, introducing your sentences via phrases like these, and making it cohesive through linking words.
The text we most often recommend at Academic Skills is The Literature Review by Machi and McEvoy. I would also recommend Pat Thompson’s blog Patter in the Literature Review category.
I hope some of this helps you to write your review with confidence, facing all kinds and lengths of literature!
SHARE

Succeeding in a Research Higher Degree

Doing a Research Higher Degree (like a PhD) is hard, but lots of people have succeeded and you can too. It’s easier if you understand how it works, this blog gives you the insider view.

Contact

Related Posts

Writing Well and Being Well for Your PhD and Beyond is published

It’s publication week for Writing Well and Being Well for Your PhD and Beyond: How to Cultivate a Strong and Sustainable Writing Practice for Life. It’s available as a paperback and ebook on all the big book websites, and via the publisher. As with all my books, I’m delighted if you buy a copy but also delighted if you recommend it to your university library so you get to read it and so does everyone else.

I had the best time writing this book, and the pre-readers have given such warm and delightful feedback. My series editor described the book as ‘your best friend’; ‘it’s personable, relatable, oozing with strategies.. It simply is a gift’. The peer reviewers said things like: it’s ‘calming and supportive’, ‘a useful review and re-thinking of the writing process’ that ‘gives permission’ for you to write, containing a ‘sprinkling of humour’ but also ‘addictively practical’.

Read More

What I learned from tracking my writing for a year

Back in 2021, I tracked my writing for a year. I kept a done diary for 6 months (as I’ve previously written about on the blog), but I also met up every month with an old co-author and we each wrote a little report on what we’d been doing: what was growing in the garden, what we were eating, what was going on in the world, what we were doing to move, what we were reading, but also what we were doing to progress our next writing project.

Read More

Towards a theory of University ‘excellence’

Universities like to say they are ‘excellent’. It’s a buzz word, and when you’ve been around campuses for a while, you realise it’s an adjective that’s applied to absolutely everything, so it kind of ends up meaning nothing. But when we look around universities, we see lots of ways they aren’t great. But recently I worked with another major partner in the global higher education industry (who is not a university) and it helped me see why ‘excellence’ discourse is good, actually.

Read More

Get the latest blog posts

%d bloggers like this: