Writing a literature review Reading for your literature review

For graduate students, developing a relationship between their own texts and those written by others more knowledgeable in the field of study can be a difficult task due to the sheer amount of reading required to be manipulated into a coherent and concise literature review within the first six months of one's study. This means the incorporation of many texts and points or view into the one piece of writing a task that has often never before been attempted by some of these students. For even at undergraduate level, the prescribed readings for essays and assignments are always limited, even to the point of suggesting one particular chapter in a text, so the student's experience of intertextuality will also be limited. Many students also come to the postgraduate experience from undergraduate studies where they have been assessed solely by examination.

Bottom up reading
Many graduate students come to their postgraduate students with a specific area of interest in their area of study. They may have a specific idea which they can identify as the basis for generating their own research question. Students in this category will need:

to develop a reading strategy which might be called 'bottom up' reading; to expand their general knowledge in the area; to look at related research to gain alternative interpretations of their original proposed idea; to expand their knowledge throughout the area of study.

They may find that they refine their original proposal several times within the process of this reading. The danger for the 'bottom-up reader' will be:

too much concentration on the minutiae of the area

a failure to demonstrate a broad understanding of the 'big picture', for example, the contribution of the research to knowledge, its significance in terms of society etc.

Top down reading

Students with a general interest in an area of study and no specific focus must develop a 'top down' strategy, whereby they need:

to look into the subcategories or specialities within their field to find their 'research place'; to read to expand their knowledge of the whole area and the additional possibilities that that area offers for research.

The danger for the 'top-down' reader will be:

presenting material which is too generalised, presenting information which scans numerous unrelated or weakly related discipline specialities and only loosely draws them together into a focused research direction.

Organising the literature

The large amount of literature that you need to report on can be better handled if it is well organised. However, at the graduate level it is not sufficient to simply summarise all that has been said. Student writers need to demonstrate some authority within the field:

The Summary Approach

Often the first attempt at writing a literature review will contain a 'summarising approach'. This type of review shows:

a tendency to contain paragraphs, each devoted to one particular reading, but all of which often constitute little more than a list of summaries from texts that have been read.

a tendency not to interpret any of the material that has been read. Very often confidence in one's own point of view or existing knowledge is undermined by the experience of reading what the experts have to say. There is a tendency to 'factor out' any personal perceptions about the material, and to avoid any questioning of expert knowledge. Improving on a summary approach.

In many ways, for students from some cultures, this early reading highlights an existing cultural norm: the acceptance of expert knowledge, at just the time when they are required to adopt a critical or 'western' approach to knowledge. Therefore, there is a degree of cultural adjustment required during the process of preparing a literature review.

To take an authoritative approach to what the experts are saying requires taking what you already understand of the field from your readings as a framework and addressing those readings in the context of your own new found knowledge. The way that knowledge is structured with this approach focuses on what you understand and how what you understand is supported in the literature. An example of the authoritative approach. To write with authority you need to be able to look at not just at what the authors are saying but how they are saying it. According to Kantz (1990), part of the difficulty that students have in integrating other texts comes from their "misreading academic texts as narratives" (p78). She proposes teaching a 'rhetorical reading' or reading a text as a message set from one person to another for some reason (p80). According to Barton (1991), student writers maintain neutrality by taking a stance "that privileges knowledge defined as product of shared social agreement" (p765) and where any controversy exists it is converted into "simple indisputable generalisations" (p751).

Academic writers, however, take a stance where knowledge becomes a product of contrast and which "values the knowledge-maker as an individual with a critical perspective" (p765). Much of this information is to be found in the use of reporting verbs.
References Barton, E. (1991) Evidentials, Argumentation, and Epistemological Stance. College English, 55 (7) 745-769. Kantz, M. (1990) Helping students use textual sources persuasively. College English, 52 (1) 74-91.

Reporting verbs
Reporting verbs are those verbs which we use when talking about text. Without a strong command of these verbs, we cannot engage authoritatively with the knowledge gained from reading. Very often student writers describe previous research in isolation, divorced from or with only tenuous links to the broader context of academic research. But as Buckingham and Nevile (1997) point out, the academic world is "complex multi-member" community where "any individual researcher's 'studying', 'finding', arguing'

etc. occurs always in the context of other researchers 'studying' etc." (p98) and demonstrating the contribution of one's current or intended research to the broader field of study, a necessary requirement of graduate study, requires engaging with the ongoing discussion of the community. Thompson and Ye's (1991) distinction between:

the 'author act' which denotes what the author has done, eg. 'found', 'argued', 'believed', and the 'writer act' which represents a point which the student writer is responsible for, eg. 'X's claim has become...', 'X's model corresponds to..'.

A second dimension, also from Thompson and Ye (1991) is the distinction between:

'denotational' reporting verbs or those which impose no attitude on the part of the writer, eg. 'X reports that...', 'X has studied...', and 'evaluational' speech act verbs which show some deeper involvement by the author, eg. 'X believes that...', 'X argues that...'.

Further evaluation can also be added with modifying adjectives and adverbs, eg: 'X argues convincingly..', 'X's excellent review of...', 'In a comprehensive study by Y,...' where the student writer makes an evaluation of the author's work (Kaldor and Rochecouste, forthcoming). Some examples of reporting the author's stance and the writer's stance

Reporting the Author's stance (his/her attitude to the content)

Positive (the author is positive): Accept, emphasize, note, point out, subscribe to, posit, eg: Brown accepts this behaviour as typical of her student population... Carroll points out that this behaviour is typical...

Firbas subscribes to the theory that this is typical behaviour...

Negative (the author is negative): Attack, dismiss, dispute, oppose, question, reject, eg: Brown questions whether this behaviour is typical of her student population Carroll dismisses this behaviour as atypical... Firbas rejects that theory that this is typical behaviour..

Reporting the (Student) Writer's stance

Factive (the author is correct) Acknowledge, demonstrate, prove, throw light on, identify, eg: Brown acknowledges that this is typical behaviour among students.. Carroll identifies this as typical student behaviour.. Firbas proves that this is typical behaviour...

Counter-factive (the author is incorrect) Confuses, disregards, ignores, eg: Brown confuses this behaviour with typical student activities.. Carroll ignores the typical behaviour of students... Firbas disregards what is typical behaviour within this group of students

Non-factive (the writer does not express an opinion of the author's information) Believes, claims, proposes, uses, eg: Brown uses this as an example of typical student behaviour Carroll claims that this is typical student behaviour

Firbas proposes that this is typical behaviour

Structuring your literature review

Developing a structure for a literature review requires an understanding of the taxonomies of knowledge that apply in the field of research:

Authors of academic texts often create new taxonomies to describe their research findings or to develop explanatory models or theories. However, sometimes these taxonomies are deeply embedded in the text, especially if the writer assumes that the reader does not require reminding of them (Kaldor & Rochecouste forthcoming). 'Top-down' readers may not immediately recognise the subcategories of knowledge that make up their research field. They may not have read widely enough to encompass many of them or the distinctions within the field may be too subtle for a non-native speaker of English to identify. Frequently students, and particularly 'bottom up' readers, are not able to 'stand back' sufficiently from the content material to look at the whole organisation of knowledge with the specific field. 'Bottom-up' readers may be fixed on their own area of interest and reluctant to consider as relevant anything that does not immediately relate to their initial focus. This group might ignore possible related areas of knowledge within the field.

Application of the authoritative approach to writing a literature review requires students to develop their own taxonomy of knowledge from their readings. The structure of this taxonomy may be based on:

the historical development of the field of research, its application in different geographical locations or with different populations, or its interpretation through different theoretical perspectives.

References: Kaldor, S. & Rochecouste, J. (forthcoming) General Academic Writing and Discipline Specific Academic writing.