For this assignment, write a literature
review in which you summarize, analyze, and synthesize at least six sources
that you have located in your independent research about your topic. You may
include additional sources from project one as well, if appropriate. At least four
of these sources must be academic: peer-reviewed journal articles, books from
an academic press, published reports, etc.
At this point in the semester, you
should have a sizeable number of sources (books, articles, websites, videos,
audio clips, etc.) about your topic. Your task in this assignment is to narrow
your pool of sources and uncover the patterns of ideas contained in these
sources. What are the types of questions that these authors ask, how do they
answer those questions, what kinds of evidence do they use, and are there
problems that remain unresolved in the existing research? To answer these
questions, you will first need to construct a clear outline that maps out the
ideas explored by each author. This will then allow you to determine the
structure for your literature review.
The literature review should be
organized as an essay with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. Your
introduction should define your topic, explain your organizational strategy
(how you selected and categorized the sources), and offers a thesis about what
the connections between your sources and their relationship to your topic. The
body paragraphs should summarize and synthesize your sources and make
connections between them based topics, arguments, methodologies, evidence, etc.
Finally, your conclusion should offer an evaluation of the sources, identify
gaps in the research, and explain how you plan to contribute to the
conversation with your research project.
Your literature review should be
3-pages long and use standard MLA-style to cite your sources and format your
document: typed, double-spaced, one-inch margins, 12-point Times font, etc. You
should also include an MLA-style Works Cited page that lists all of the sources
discussed in your literature review.
