Essay 2: The world in my topic: My International Literature Review
Meets all course outcomes.
3-5 pages.
Three (3) international sources.
APA format.
See assignment sheet for grading rubric
This assignment asks you to draw three (3) credible sources together from the databases, from three different parts of the world. From there, you will do a brief synthesis, or literature review. There will be resources in D2L, but UNC will get us started. As they note, literature reviews are meant to help us find out the current “conversation” in your field of study or research.
Your three sources will focus on your research question, but they will be from, or focused on, different geographical locations around the world. What are these different sources focused on? Do they all address a similar problem? A similar solution? Where do they overlap? Where do they differ? As UNC notes,
A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.
This means you not only need to read and understand your sources, but you need to them be able to “zoom out” and look at what your sources are saying regarding your research question, and find those common themes or issues. Your organization, again as noted by UNC, can take any form, but I urge you away from “by publication” as that can often not lend itself to synthesis.
We will be putting together an outline and rough draft of this assignment before turning in the final draft, which will help make sure we are all on the right track.
Grading Criteria:
Sources are all credible, from global academic sources.
Sources all focus on the same research question or narrowed topic.
Essay has a clear synthesis thesis statement.
Sources are cited correctly in the body of the paper (in APA format), and in the Reference list.
The writing in the essay is nearly error-free, not distracting the reader from the author’s point.
