How to organize your literature review and the critics from examiners for your literature review

1. Group related studies together
2. Review briefly any weaker studies or studies that share similar methods. Devote more attention to ground-breaking, stronger studies
3. Organize studies by findings
4. Organize by methodology
5. Organize by theory

critics from examiners

1. Landmark studies are not included
2. Outdated material is given too prominent a place
3. Recent literature is not included
4. The perspective is not wide enough
5. The review is not sufficiently analytical
6. The write has not discriminated between relevant and irrelevant material
7. There is no coherence
8. The literature is not related to the research question or hypothesis
9. Sources are not correctly interpreted.

Typical tenses used in the literature review

Choices of tense and reasons for their use
Choice of tense Reason
Present simple –

• A generalisation is being made
• A reference is being made to the state of current knowledge
• Previous findings are being presented/are accepted as facts

Simple past

• A reference is being made to a single study
• A specific piece of research and its findings are being referred to

Present perfect

• A general area of investigation or inquiry is being referred to
• A general statement is made about previous research