Hey guys welcome to another episode of
Grad Coach TV where we demystify the
ivory tower world of academia and show
you how to work smart and earn the big
marks. My name is Derek and in this video
we're gonna be looking at how to write
a literature review - and most
importantly how to do that in three
pretty straightforward simple steps. Now
this video is based on
our free dissertation 101 ebook, which
you can download at the Grad Coach
website. I'll put the link to that below
this video. So without any delay let's
get right into it. Now, before we jump
into how to write a literature review,
it's really important to step back and
ask what is the function, what is the why
of a literature review. If we understand
the why then the how becomes a lot
simpler, and the what becomes a lot simpler. So let's talk about some of the most
important functions of the literature
review. So step one, or function number
one of the literature review is for you
to demonstrate that you have a solid
understanding of the literature, and the
research the state of research around
your research questions. so your research
is going to be on a certain topic and
the starting point for your discussion
there is to show that whatever your
research question is, whatever the the
aim of your research is, you need to
demonstrate that you know what has
already been done. Academic writing is
about standing on the shoulders of
giants and so you need to show who were
the giants, who were the people that have
done this research before, what have they
said, what is the state of the argument.
So that's really function number one and
and arguably it's the most important
function. So let's look at function
number two. Function number two, the
second why of a literature review, is for
you, from that basis of literature to
show that there is a gap. To show that
there is a need for your specific
research. so if you're doing masters are
you doing PhD research regardless of the
level that you're at there's some
requirement for originality. Generally
universities don't want you to research
something that's been done a million times,
because what's the purpose of that. So
what the literature review serves to do
is for you to go and do the work and to
figure out where are the gaps in the
literature, where are the gaps in the
research, how can I take a unique angle
and something that's not been done
before, hopefully not done to death
but, how can I take a unique angle in
terms of context or in terms of a
specific specific country a specific
environment etc. So the second
function of your literature review and
of you just reviewing the literature the
actual act of reviewing it, is for you to
establish that clear clear clear need
for your research. Now, the third function
is not necessarily relevant to everyone,
but for those of you who are planning to
build a theoretical model or conceptual
model, conceptual framework the
literature review is the basis of that.
So what you would then be doing is
taking the various theories the various
pieces of research that have been
undertaken in the past and building some
sort of conceptual model that you would
then go on to test and to validate.
Perhaps not relevant to everyone but
that is an important function if you are
doing any sort of quantitative
validation testing etc. The fourth
important function of the literature
review is for you to have a foundation
or to build a foundation of methodology.
So what I mean by this is when you are
reviewing all the literature in your
space that is relevant to your research
question your research aims, what you're
going to find naturally is you're going
to get exposure to all the various
studies that have been done and you're
going to see what methodologies they use.
Did they use qualitative, did they use
quantitative, if they used quantitative,
did they have well-validated, well
tested question sets, did they publish
questionnaires etc. So the
literature review gives you an
opportunity to really dig into what's
already been done and to build on that.
Very often if you're doing surveys, you
can find through your literature review
you can find good question sets, you can
find
a good set of scales that have decent
Cronbach's alphas and so forth. If this
language doesn't make any sense, don't
stress we'll get to it in another video.
The point is that a very important
function of the literature review is for
you to get some inspiration, to get some
insights and perhaps even some useful
practical tools and takeaways to inform
your methodology. So those are the four
important functions of the literature review
and the first two are really what you
need to keep in mind. In other words,
showing that you understand what you're
talking about, showing that you're not
just coming in and trying to reinvent
the wheel, show that you have read the
literature that is relevant to your
specific problem and then of course show
that the angle you're gonna take is is
actually original, is somehow unique and
somehow warranted in terms of going out
and doing the research. So let's not harp
on about this anymore. Let's jump into
the three steps of how to write your
literature review. Alright, so on to step
one of how to write your literature
review. Step one is really no surprise.
Step one is to go out and find the relevant
research. This probably sounds pretty obvious
but you'll be surprised how some people
approach this. So step one is go out
there and do the digging. Get out and
find the research. Now if you've already
done your proposal and that's been
accepted then chances are you've got
some sort of foundation of core
literature already, but nevertheless even
though your proposal has been accepted,
your university and your supervisor will
expect that you go on and do more review,
deeper review of what's the relevant
literature. So in this section, we're
going to talk about four pretty useful
tactics to go out and find the relevant
literature. This part of the process can
really take a lot of time. If you don't
have the right approach to going out and
hunting you can waste a lot of time
going down dead ends
and really no one wants to do that. This
is a big project and you want to get
through the literature as quickly as
possible. So yeah, I'll talk about four
techniques / four methods to find the
literature find the relevant research
that's out there. Sso let's have a look at
that.
Method number one of finding the
literature is what we call Google
Scholar scrubbing and really there's
nothing to this. You probably already are
familiar with Google Scholar. If you're
not, you can check it out at
scholar.google.com. Google Scholar is
just a search engine for academic
material, much like Google is a search
engine for the rest of the Internet. So
Google Scholar is really a powerful
search engine it's using Google's
technology and so in terms of finding
material that is super relevant to
whatever keywords whatever focal topic
you're you're looking at, you can't
beat google scholar. Google Scholar is
really great for getting that initial
idea of what is the literature that's
out there. What also makes Google Scholar
really awesome is that they show the 
citation data. In other words, how
often has any particular article journal
article been cited. So this gives you a
good idea of the authority and the
credibility of any given article. If
there are specific requirements from
your university in terms of the
credibility of the the content that
you're citing, then you should definitely
be paying very good attention to how
many times each of these articles has
been cited. So, step one is get into
Google Scholar and just search for any
possible relevant keyword and have a dig
through all of the articles that are
there. A good way to figure out what's
relevant is to open the
articles that that seem relevant in
terms of their title and have a look at
the abstract. Having a quick read
through that that will give you a decent
idea of whether or not this is something
that that suits you, or that fits within
your research aims and objectives. What you will find when you use Google
Scholar is that some articles are
totally free to access - you click
the link and open sesame - there it is. It's accessible.
But a lot of them you'll find are behind
some sort of pay wall, so you're going to
run into that wall quite often - you might
get lucky and you might find that
everything you need is free and openly
accessible, but you're likely going to
run into a lot of dead ends in terms of
hitting the journals where you have to
pay, you have to log in etc. Don't
worry about that at this point. What you
want to do is you just want to take down
the titles of all of these articles. If
you can download anything for free, go
for it and download it, but what
you're going to do is take down these
titles. Take them down exactly as you see
them, including the author name date etc,
and then head on over to method number
two, which is your university database or
your university library. Every
university will generally give you
access to their licensed set of content
and this is usually quite broad, so most
often what you'll find is that you're
going to find a lot of content on Google
Scholar method number one and you're
going to bring that to method number two
you're gonna go and copy/paste that
title exactly as you found it in Google
Scholar. You go and copy paste that into
your universities search engine and then
most often you'll find that there you'll
be able to access it there. If you can't,
you might want to shoot an email over to
your institution and just ask them if
there is any way that we could get
access to to this article. What is really
important when you use method number two,
in other words your universities
database, is that you copy paste the
article title exactly as you see it. 
The reason I say this is that unlike
Google Scholar, the university databases
and the university search engines are
usually pretty basic, pretty
rudimentary in terms of the technology
they're using - so if you don't put the
title in exactly as they have it in the
article, there's a good chance that your
one word out and you're just going to
totally miss the results that you need.
It's going to look like they don't exist.
So make sure that you copy/paste it
what is being shown. So that's
method number two. Method number one
Google Scholar method number two go
hand-in-hand very well so let's take a
look at method number three. Method
number three is what we call snowballing. Snowballing is really really effective
once you find a few core articles that
are super super relevant to your topic.
So what snowballing is that you download
two or three articles that are
hyper relevant to whatever your
research questions are, whatever your
research aims are, whatever the focus of
your research is. You get those three
articles and go to the end of those three
articles, As always, as in any journal
article, there will be a list of
references at the end. This is
usually just completely ignored or even
not even printed out by students but
really, this is the gold mine, because this
is showing you everything that that
article that article that was super
relevant to you it's showing you
everything that that's built on. In other
words all the sources for you to go and
unpack the foundations of that article.
So what you do with those two or three
core articles is you pay very close
attention to the articles that they are
referencing,  you go and find those using
Google Scholar or your your university's
database, and you read through those. You
see whether they're relevant. If they are
relevant, you do the same thing - you go to
their reference list and you dig through
those references and you're going to
find a snowball effect where you're
just picking up more and more and more
and more and more and you're going to
eventually end up with a wealth of
highly relevant articles. Generally what
you'll find is as you snowball further
and further, the article references might
start getting older and older and older
because naturally articles are built on
articles over time. So it is
something to be aware of that you might
find that you you start running into
very old territory - so just be aware of
that. Right, the final method for hunting
down relevant resources, hunting down
relevant articles, is pretty
straightforward.
That is to have a look at other
people's dissertations that are related
to your topic. Ideally you want to be
looking at dissertations from your own
institution, but realistically you're
probably not going to find too many
articles or too many dissertations about
your exact topic or that link to your
topic within your own institution unless
it's a really big institution. So you're
probably gonna have to look at other
people's dissertations from
other countries or from other
universities, etc etc. The good news is it
doesn't really matter too much, because
at this point all you're looking for is
sources. You're not looking for
inspiration about how they laid out
their dissertation, how they how they
connected various parts. All you're
looking for is sources that are relevant
to your research topic. So other peoples'
dissertations are a great place to look
because obviously they've been in a
similar situation and they've gone and done the work that you're
currently doing. There are various
databases that you can look at in
addition to your own school's database. EBSCO Host,
ProQuest, etc - there's quite a few of them.
What I'll do is include some links to
the main ones below this video. So you
can just check below this video and you
can jump through to those. Dissertations
generally are easy to access, free to
access, obviously people are not charging
money for them - so that is a great way to
to quickly look at other people's
literature reviews that were in a
similar space. A big word of warning
through all of this is you are dealing
with students work - so you don't know
whether that student got a good mark, you
don't know that they got a bad mark. All
you know is that they passed. So do be
careful when you're using this method. Do
use common sense and don't rely too
heavily on anyone's dissertation. 
Nevertheless use it as a starting point
for finding relevant articles. So those
are the three methods for finding the
literature. Step one is the
most important step - you can't do anything
until you have gone and done the digging.
So many students avoid the digging. It's
hard work, it's painful, it's slow. But as I say
the smart way to approach this is use
the combination of the methods that I've
spoken about and don't go and read full
articles - just read the abstract. If the
abstract doesn't tell you enough, look at
the introduction and the conclusion of
any given article and that should give
you a feel for if its relevant or
isn't relevant. So that's pretty much
step one in a nutshell -
find the literature. So let's jump on to
step two. Step two of how to write your
literature review is that you now need
to log, catalog and synthesize the
literature. So, three important functions
and they're essential as a next step. Now
I'm presenting this as step one and then
step two - it's not necessarily sequential.
What you'll often do is you will find a
wholle lot of literature in step one, you'll
start logging and cataloging and
synthesizing it - and then some new
thoughts will come up and you'll
potentially go back to step one, start
looking for more literature. So it might be a more iterative approach, in
fact, it should be a more iterative
approach - but I'm trying to simplify the
process here and saying that step two is
logging and cataloging and synthesizing
the literature. So let's dig into step
two - what do we mean by logging
cataloging and synthesizing the
literature? So step one is logging the
reference information. Logging is really
a simple activity and all it means is
you've gone and dug up a whole lot of
articles - some of which are relevant, some
which aren't - and you can throw them out.
But you've gone and gathered all of
these articles and the most important
thing to do right up front now is to go
and put that into your reference
management software. Now if you're not
using a reference manager like Mendeley
or Zotero or something like that,
now is the time to learn how to use one,
because you're just never going to
manage your references any other way for a good dissertation or thesis. We
do have videos on on both of those
pieces of software - I'll include the
links below video.  So step one is go and log all your
information. What you'll find with a lot
of pieces of software, specifically
Mendeley (which you can check out that
video on this channel) is there is a good
deal of synchronizing and easy
importing from the likes of Google
Scholar or the likes of your university
database. You can pretty easily import
those references directly into Mendeley, 
so you don't need to physically go and
type everything out. If you are doing
importing, I would recommend you just run
over it and check all the data that's
been imported. Make sure that it makes
sense. Sometimes there can be small errors. Sometimes they can be typos in the
reference data, but overall the import
tends to work pretty well. So step one,
get all that data into your reference
manager, even if stuff doesn't look
particularly relevant right now, put it
in because it's just gonna save you time
later. You don't need to go back and
forth so as you find content. Dump it
into your reference manager and then
it's there. When it comes time to
actually cite it it's as simple as just
entering in the title and clicking drag
and drop and boom it's in your word
document. So step 1 is to log all your data or
log all your references or your journal
articles into your reference manager.
Step 2 is cataloguing your information. So this
is again really really important - 
arguably even more important than step
one. You're going to through this process
you're going to build up a huge wealth
of literature and it's tempting in the
beginning to think that you are gonna
remember what everything was called.
You're gonna remember that point that
that guy made over there, that framework
that someone did that was super relevant
or maybe not so relevant. It's tempting
to think that you're gonna remember all
the stuff and in reality you're not - 
simply not. As you build out more and
more and more and more it's just going
to become a haze of information and yeah
you'll start remembering certain
author's names and surnames and whatnot,
but in reality there's no way you can
navigate this. If you if you're doing a
good literature review, you're 
probably working with a hundred, 200, who
knows how many different references or
sources and and you're just not gonna
remember them. So what becomes really
important is to build a catalog. I
recommend building a catalog in Excel - 
we've got a free template that you can
download from the Grad Coach website
I'll include that link below this
video. Whether you use that or not,
you need some sort of database of all of
your articles and what that database
needs to be it's not particularly
sophisticated, but it needs to be something that
includes for every for every article
needs to include: the author, the date
the title, obviously their core
information and some sort of summary
about what the article is about. Some
sort of summary about the key points, the
the key insights in relation to your
topic. Perhaps some summary of
methodological components or suggestions or assets that you could use and just
any other notes about each article. What you ideally want is for that to
be split up over as many columns. In
other words, to have as granular data as
possible so that you can go and you can
sort and you can filter. So that you can
sort for example by a certain time
period because your literature review
might be in in time order (we'll talk
about that next). You want to be able to
sort by key topics. So I usually
recommend putting some keywords.
For each article, you want to be able to sort
by key variables - for example if you're
doing a quantitative study and you're
testing the the relevance of certain
variables, you want to be able to go
quickly in Excel just filter out and see
who was it that spoke about this
variable having an impact on on X or Y.
So you want to get down to as much
detail as possible there so that when
you come to a point where you have 100,
200, 300 different sources, you can just
quickly run through that and that
becomes super super important when
you're writing you're finally writing up
your literature review, because you don't
want to have to go and say okay who was
it who were all of the people that spoke
about this. You just want to go into
Excel. and say okay, this variable
here - just say we're talking about a
specific variable that contributes
towards trust. Hypothetically let's say
competence is that variable. Who were all
of the articles or all of the authors
that spoke about trust that spoke about
competence being an antecedent of trust
for example. Then Excel will just go
boom and you know these were the five authors. Then you can very quickly go and put
together a really chunky piece in your
literature review saying these people
these people these people these people
spoke about it and they had a slightly
different angle. So this is super
super important and it's something that
students tend to rush past because it
feels like you're just doing double work
having to build a catalog and and put
all that detail in there and then still
having to go and write about it, but trust
me literature reviews take time and
over time you're not gonna remember who
said what. So very importantly, use the
catalog and as I say, if you don't want
to build your own one there's a free one
you can download from the Grad Coach
website. Whatever you do,
build a catalog. Right let's get on to
step three.
Naturally step three is to digest all
of this content and to synthesize it in
your mind. So far you've gone and logged
all your data into your reference
manager. You've gone and cataloged the
stuff into Excel, but it's tempting to
think okay well we've got it all ,it's
all there
now let's just write up. But you've got
to take a step back and you've got to
really spend your time synthesizing all
of this information in your head
thinking about how does it all fit
together. This is an important step
and it's not one that I can give you too
much prescription on. It's not one that I
can give you too much advice about. You've gotta spend time in your literature.
You've got to spend time thinking about how the research questions that you're
asking are being answered by the current
theory, by the current literature, the
current research. How do all of these
pieces fit together. Who is agreeing
about what. What are people disagreeing
about.
How does everything fit together and
what narrative am I going to write about.
This is why it's really important to give
some thought to how it all comes
together and piece it together in your
mind. Start thinking about the arguments
that you want to develop in
your literature review. Spend some time taking a step back, because up until now
everything you've done has been very
very focused on this article and then
this article and then this article in
this article. What what happens
while you're doing that is that you
start thinking
in silos. So you want to take a
step back from all of that and you want
to say okay, how does it all fit together.
If I were to give a speech on all
that has been said, how could I combine
that into something that's cohesive and
how can I combine that into a narrative -
because that's what you're going to be
doing in your literature review chapter.
So take a step back - think about what is
going on. This is not something
that you'll do in one session - you're
probably going to do it over a good few
days perhaps a few weeks. What I'd
recommend is to use some sort of visual
aid. Everyone is different but I find
that visual aids are super useful. What I mean by that is spend some time
mind mapping all of these bits and
pieces that you've got. You can use mind
mapping software like Freemind or any
of the hundreds of apps that are
available - or my preference is a nice big
whiteboard and a marker and just free
handing it and connecting this idea to that idea to
that idea and raising new
questions. Just putting it all down
in a visual format trying to bring all
of the stuff together visually for me
works well because I can just keep track
of everything that's being said as
opposed to trying to keep it in my mind.
 Do whatever works for you - perhaps it's
just sitting down and making notes,
perhaps it's drawing up mind maps.
Whatever you do don't rush into writing up because what you're
gonna do is you're gonna rush in and
you're gonna write you're gonna write a
decent literature review (because all the
contents fresh in your mind) but you're
gonna fail to see how the things fit
together and that means synthesizing all
of this content. If you fail to see
that, you're really not gonna have a
strong piece of literature or a strong a
strong literature review, because
outsiders will be able to step in, take a
zoomed out perspective and ask what
about this, why didn't he talk about this. The reason you didn't talk about
that is because you were so narrowly
focused in on these key variables that
you didn't take a step back and think
about how it all fits together.
I know I'm harping on about this but take the time to step back and digest and then
synthesize all of the information that's
in front of you. So that is step two of
the literature review process. Log it
catalog it and then step back and
synthesize all of this in your mind into
some sort of big picture view. Right step
two is done - let's move on to step three.
Right - finally on to step three: outlining
and writing up. Finally we're gonna get
writing. Right, so it's really important
to notice that I said two things there:
one outlining two writing up. Don't write
up before your outline. I know it's
really tempting at this stage you've
gone through all of these steps before
you've gone through all of the process
and you just say "I just want to get
writing! I just want to get my thoughts
down onto paper! I just want to get
some sort of tangible product
that I can give to my supervisor give to
my committee!". I understand, I understand
but trust me, the first step is outlining.
Outlining can mean going back to
your whiteboard and again doing things
visually, or it can just be a Word
document with the set of bullet points.
Whatever your preference is the most
important thing is to figure out how
you're going to structure your
discussion upfront. If you don't
spend that time, what you're going to do
is
gonna get writing and you're gonna say a
lot, but it's not necessarily going to be
conveying things in a an optimized
fashion. It's not going to be necessarily
conveying things in a way that is easy
for a first-time reader to understand
and it is really important that you take
the time to communicate well, because
you've done all this work. It's very
easy for a student who knows their
literature inside-out to do a poor job
of communicating that on paper and and
that's obviously very sad because
they've done the work, they've put in the
effort but they just didn't communicated
well on paper. So let me not harp on - the
point is spend some time outlining how
you're going to approach your
dissertation or how you're going to
approach your literature review first.
There are, broadly speaking, two ways that you can structure a
literature review. One is chronologically - so just
structuring it based on how the
narrative is developed over time.
That's suitable for some topics, for
some research questions etc. Another
way to structure it is thematically. Very often if you are looking at
antecedents/drivers/causes of X or
contributors to X, a nice way to
structure it is per antecedent or per
group of drivers, so that there's driver
number one, driver number two, driver
number 3, driver number four, and how all
of these things contribute to a certain
outcome. How are you gonna structure
your your literature review is is really
down to two each person. I can't really
recommend how you do that in this sort
of video. If you're unsure, you're more than
welcome to book a free consultation with
one of our Grad Coach guides and they
can probably give you some good advice
in that respect. Regardless of what your
structure is going to be, make sure that
you're outlining everything first. Have a
clear outline on paper. Obviously you're
not going to stick to this 100%. You
might take a turn once you start writing -
that's absolutely fine. But have
something that you start with. Have a
clear idea of how you're going to
develop a narrative before you start writing. Don't fall into
the trap of just running off and writing
up five thousand, ten thousand
words, with lots of information, but not a
clear narrative - because the narrative is
what wins. Having a clear line of
argument that builds a plus B plus C
plus D equals whatever outcome - that is
the most important thing in terms of
communicating what you have. So step one - outline - then step two is time to write
it up. In terms of writing up, I can't give you really too much advice on
this but I can say that there is a very
very important thing to keep in mind
when you're writing up. That is that
on your first literature review draft, perfection is not
the objective. I'm gonna say that again
because this is so so important to just
getting things down on paper.
Don't try go for perfect. Perfect is the
wrong objective at this stage. A really good mantra to work with is "done
is better than perfect". What you're
trying to do in your first draft of your
literature review (and really your first
draft of anything in your dissertation
or thesis) is to just get the rough
content down. You've already got an
outline, so whatever you put down is
gonna be a reasonably decent narrative.
Don't get stuck on conveying points
in the best possible fashion. Don't get
stuck in trying to create this perfectly
smooth argument and smooth
narrative on first draft of the literature review. Rather just get everything down onto
paper for version one. Then what you do
once you've done that is you go back. I
would suggest once you've dumped everything onto paper,
I would just take a day or two step away
from it. Just clear your mind get away
from the literature because your mind will be foggy about this point
in time. Then come back and have a read
through and do
rough edits to improve the flow from one section to another,
to strengthen certain points, to
improve the prominence of some
certain component that everything hinges
on. Tighten it up, basically. Then what I
would suggest you do is give your
literature review to a friend or a
family member or someone who cares
enough to actually read it. Ask them
to have a read through. Don't give them
too much information. Ask them to have a
read through and to just give you some
feedback. Did they understand it? Did they
find it interesting to read?
Did it make any sense?
A good way of judging whether or not you
got your key points of across is to ask
them to explain the the literature
review back to you. Obviously not in
great detail but ask them to just
give you a bit of a summary of what was
it all about. What you'll see when
you get that feedback from someone who's
completely fresh, someone who
hasn't been in the thick of all this
literature and the thick of your
research topic and the thick of of a
dissertation or thesis. What you'll get
is a very clear indication of what
points stuck, what points were clear and
what points were not clear. So that's
super super useful feedback and this is
where I say if you're gonna get a friend
to look at your content, don't give them
all of the information upfront. Don't
don't give them a warm up. Just give them
your document. If there's some
technical jargon that you need to
explain, maybe you want to explain your
research questions that would be a good
start so at least they understand what you're
trying to achieve - but don't give them
the mini version. Give them your
literature review and ask them to have a read of it. Whatever they tell you in response,
whatever they give back to you
when you ask them to explain it, that's
going to give you a very good view
of what points were strong which
points were clear, which arguments really
need some some propping up. So I would do
that, then obviously do an edit after
that, maybe maybe have a few friends that
could give you feedback. The
more the merrier. Once you've got that
feedback, once you see what's
lacking, do another tightening up of your
document at that point and then it's
probably a good idea to send it off to
your supervisor and get some feedback
from them. You can also work
with one of our Research Specialists at
Grad Coach and they can give you an
in-depth critique before you send it off
to your supervisor. That's up to every
student. What is beneficial if you work
with a professional beforehand is that
they will iron out all the the 
straightforward issues or the all the
basic issues and what that does is it
clears up your your supervisors plate so
that they can really focus on key issues,
as opposed to fairly rudimentary things.
It's up to you how you want to
work that, but whatever you do, get that
that pretty tightened up document over
to your supervisor and get the feedback
from them before you go tighten it up any further. That is
pretty important and depending on your
university, you might have multiple
review sessions with your supervisor, you
might only have one. You've got to figure
out how best you to utilize that
resource of supervision and feedback.
Do you pay a lot of attention to
whatever feedback they give you because
very often the supervisor is the first
marker and so you want to be satisfying
whatever requests they're putting in. So
that is step three - as I say really
important to outline, then get writing
but when you're writing remember that
done is better than perfect. 
Don't get stuck
in trying to make things 100% the first
time around. Just get your thoughts down
onto paper and then tighten up, tighten
up, tighten up, give to a friend, give to
someone at Grad Coach, give to your
research supervisor and tighten up
tighten up, through the process. But don't
try to write the perfect literature review the first
time because you're just gonna get stuck,
you're just gonna get writer's block and
you're never going to finish this thing.
So there you have it - those are the three
steps of how to write a literature
review. Really no rocket science -
this is all pretty straightforward stuff,
but as I'm sure you've noticed there are some key points to remember as you
progress through this whole literature
review process. To recap: start with why.
Start with understanding what is a
literature review all about. What is the
purpose of the literature review. Then
get on to going and digging up content
and I shared with you a good few
techniques there and there's some links
below this video to help you with that. 
Find your content and step two, log that
stuff straight into your reference
manager, catalog it into a detailed
Excel spreadsheet. If you remember, we
have a free one that you can use - link
below this video as always - and then
spend the time synthesizing all of it in
your mind, perhaps on a whiteboard. Then
step three, finally get to the writing
but before you write, outline your
argument outline - how you're going to
structure this chapter and then get
writing and don't worry about perfection.
Get your arguments down on paper. Three
pretty straightforward steps to write a
literature review. One last thing to say
before we go - if you have any questions
about your dissertation, thesis,
literature review or any components of the
research process, you are most welcome to drop us an email and we'll do our best
to give you an answer if we can. Our
email address is hello@grad.coach
you can also book a free consultation
with
one of our Research Specialists. we have
a group of really really experienced and
skilled PhD qualified research
specialists that help students like you
every day with their research and you're
more than welcome to grab a free
consultation with them. Again I'll put
the link below this video. If you enjoyed
the video, please give us a like please
give us a thumbs up, share it with your
friends, subscribe to our YouTube channel -
whatever works for you. More than
anything we hope we provided you with
some value in this video. So for today or
at least for this video, this is Grad
Coach signing out!
