probably my most asked question to do with academic writing and the dissertation process is Amina how do I write a literature review how do I write a first class level literature review and I've battled with trying to find an amazing and just like the best way of explaining it and the best way of structuring it for you guys to understand and I developed a six-part step-by-step scaffolded template and this is something I'm going to be going through in today's video I've got it here and I'm going to be showing it to you on screen as
well so you can see I'll leave the link for it down below as well if you're interested in picking it up but essentially I've built a six step guide and this takes you from the minute you get your literature review title and the topic till the point that you actually submit and you've got a finished literature review and whilst there are so many resources out there on literature reviews and how to by a good one I think Take it Back to Basics and I haven't seen this being done before I haven't seen the step-by-step scaffolded
guide the way that you know when women Primary School when we were really young we had a guide to how for how to write sentences you start with this you finish with this and this is the middle and here are the connectives I've done that with a literature review so I'm gonna be going through each of those six steps and you know if you're not interested in getting it you can still pick up all the information from this video so hopefully it could help you either way okay step number one is you want to think
of ideas so here is where the brainstorming really begins you've got your title you've got your topic and you want to think about what ideas are there that I can delve into so this is where you want to redefine what your literature review is going to be about what area do you really want to Target because if you make your topic too wide there's going to be too much information and your review is going to lack depth it's going to be Broad um talking about so many different things and not really accomplishing a proper critical
discussion if it's too narrow you're not giving yourself enough space or enough room to discuss around the subject and you probably won't you'll probably really struggled to be honest if it's narrow if it's wide you'll find it really easy because there's so much information but if it's too narrow you're going to really struggle finding papers so Step One is where you brainstorm you think right I'm talking about this topic what ideas can I discuss what do I find interesting and what is being spoken about today in the research field in that area what do we
not know what could we know more about and that is where you kind of brainstorm so in the template I have included four ideas four spaces for ideas where essentially you want to brainstorm and do a lot of reading you're kind of reading around your subject you're having a look at the news if it's something more relevant online you want to speak to people in your field your supervisor and pick out full kind of key areas of your research and actually those four key areas could end up being different paragraphs within your review as well
now stage number two is where you select your sources and what I've got here is I've got a critical reading summary and I've got that for five papers and I mean you're more than welcome to of course read more than five papers but I want when you're reading for you to really think about the critical aspect of it and the reason why I'm saying this is because if you're someone that wants to you know achieve a first class this is something that you need to start doing really early on the biggest mistake that students do
is they've come to write the literature review they write it away and then they're like hmm critical what's critical reading what can I add that's critical and they're trying to add critical thinking into it critical thinking isn't something you add it's something that you are actively doing you're reading critically whilst you're you know getting your sources whilst you're getting ideas and then when you write that kind of comes into the the you know the pros as you're going along it's not something that you like go oh let's add some critical thinking over there and that's
not how it I mean it's really obvious when that's done like that so the reason why I've added this on really early on stage two is selecting your sources is because it means that when you're picking your sources and you're actually doing that reading you're reading critically so you're not going to have to go back again and try to critique again so some that some things I've included are things like um significance like why does this research matter why is it important and who does it matter to um things like what is striking about the
tables um things like why did my author include the different graphs the different data were there any limitations or setbacks and what were the objectives when did the research take place how did the author collect the data these are all things that when you're reading you pick those points out of your text and or your research papers that you're reading and you might think Hmm they've included this graph or they've included this data doesn't quite match up with this one or it does or whatever it picks out and that is how you're picking out some
critical thinking it makes you're actually thinking critically and I got this for five papers then stage three is to narrow it down you know you've got your information you've got your your reading and now you want to narrow it down and find the focus what is your focus what are you really really focusing on what is the theme that's going to be running throughout your literature review and then so another Point I've asked here is what are some generalized limitations or weaknesses that you have found from the reading and lastly what other groups that you've
narrowed down your reading in so when you've been reading your your text um whether it's your articles whether it's research papers whether it's you've been speaking to people regardless of what your topic is what are some themes that you think you want to delve into in the review and this is most likely going to form your paragraphs so when you start off you know you have your introduction and then you've got maybe like three or four paragraphs what are those paragraphs that is where kind of narrowing it down and getting that Focus comes from then
stage four is building a mind map so this is completely blank on this page and I actually have a bit of a mind map here that sort of a bit of an example for you to see but essentially you want to think about how can this issue be addressed how can you take your topic and address it in a way that is um original so some things I want to to think about one when trying to make this mind about are things like what theories help us to understand the issue that you're looking at where
can we look for better answers or Solutions um how is it currently being addressed what is the issue of the thing that you're looking at why is it important who is it important to and what methods have been used to investigate this um so far what are the motivations what are disadvantages why should we not be satisfied with current approaches so I've put out put down quite a few prompts for you to think about why this topic is important um and have a bit of a mind map so you're now putting you've done your reading
so you have the background information so you can actually answer these questions and then you're now trying to build a mind map of what is going on exactly within your field what is going on within the literature that you've just read and how can you then group this together into some something that is um a discussion point the next topic is the next stage even is stage five and that is the planning stage and this is where you create an outline and this is you know you've got the information that's all here it's all here
and now you want to create an outline for your literature review before you start writing so I've got the topic the top topic so what you write that down then the introduction so what is going to form your introduction what are you going to open up this literature review by saying then you've got the main body and I've included five well six points actually um but it really is up to you depends on how long the review is I would suggest that introduction 10 to 15 20 Max conclusion 10 percent and then middle should be
the main bulk so about 70 should be in the middle within that if you have five main points that can be broken down into like 15 each 10 each for example so it's really important that you think about um what your main themes are and that's something that you have thought about already if you're following this step-by-step guide um so all you need to do is when you're planning is just writing main point number one and talk about the history of pregnancy then number two talk about malpractice in it then number three speak about what's
being done then number four so you've got your main points you know what the structure is going to be and it helps to look at it as well because it means that you might think that doesn't quite make sense or like I'm not included I haven't included this thing on that this is missing or actually to be able to explain point four I need to know point I have to have explained something else so it makes you think a little bit more and then last but not least is stage six which is the writing and
the editing stage and here I've included did something I've called an argument map and that is a map it's a bit like p-e-l you know at school when you learn Point evidence explanation then link it it's a bit like that but this isn't the academic sense and I've called it an argument map and so I've given a structure of an example of one paragraph of an argument map and then obviously you can go and develop that into more depth so the opening significant statement what are you starting with that is your opening statement then number
two expand so you know you started off by saying this is the issue just expand it a little bit so maybe two or three more sentences about that then you want evidence and you want analysis to link your ideas so now we've spoken about it bring some of your reading in bring some of that evidence in that you've been doing before and link your ideas up so you now want to expand your argument and start to critique So speaking about limitations what's missing in the field maybe any methods that have been used or haven't been
used and really bring that all together to make sure that you're starting an argument and really going into depth about that particular significant statement and then last but not least is a Linker sentence and I always say that you need to use a linked sentence at the start and the end of every every single paragraph and so Linker sentences is a sentence that and I've done a short about it by the way so go and check it out it was last week um the Linker sentence is a sentence that just kind of preempts what's coming
up and kind of concludes what's just been said so you might say something like right as a result of this which you just was you know what you're speaking about there's also and you're kind of linking into what's going to happen next so none of your paragraphs should be abrupt they should never just end I should know as a reader what's going to be coming in the next paragraph what is going to be discussed next and so having Linker sentences is really important and it really helps flow as well and then I've got a checklist
over here so I've got a checklist of all the kind of things that you need to look for when writing in your introduction your middle the body and also the end so just a few points and then lastly I thought it'd be helpful but this and a mark scheme um so you can zoom in like you can see it but this is a mark scheme and I've just taken it from kind of what university it was but it's a general it's one of the top universities and it's an undergraduate Mark scheme for levels four to
six so I've made sure that it's not so four to six is year one year two and year three of University so I've made sure to make it General and not just for year six for example um level six for example which is third year and it's given pointers for all the different categories of what a marker would be looking for so for example um research subject knowledge critical analysis testing problem skills and problem solving skills experimentation um communication academic Integrity so things like referencing is correct and collaborative working data literacy so you've been able
to present your data correctly things like that so I I thought it would just be handy to have that there because like I said not everyone has a mark scheme and I find that actually knowing what they expect of you is really how for and one thing you can do if you print this out or even if you use it on like a tablet or something it's just highlighting so let's say um research it says here extensive independent relevant research evidence by quality and quantity use um and so you might be like okay you know
I've done lots of research I'm green I'm good with that but I haven't done lots of critical analysis so I'm read with that so just having a bit of a like play on kind of where you think you sit or even giving this to a supervisor or someone who can read your literature review before you submit it and saying look do you mind telling me where I fall or you can send it to the page doctor which is my um academic company which whereby we actually look at mark schemes if you give us your own
one as well and we can say write you for you most likely Fall within this this kind of bracket and we can give you feedback and help you improve that as well so yeah anyway if you want this template I will leave it down below I'm so proud of it I I genuinely feel like developing these templates and I have a ton of other ones as well um has been one of the like most rewarding things I've done in the past couple of weeks slash months and it genuinely is because it's scuff it really scaffolds
it for people and really scaffolds it for you and I've had so many comments from people saying that I've got ADHD or I've got um dyslexia and it really helps for me to actually see and have like step one you do this and step one in step two you do that and you know what it's not just if you have ADHD I I find this kind of thing so helpful just having a structure and just having like a pattern because now you know what next time you have to write a review you know exactly how
it works and it's something that isn't taught so you know I'm teaching it to you basically so yeah if you enjoyed this video please don't forget to give me a thumbs up and don't forget to follow me to see more from me and if you have any other idea for templates that you want to see or any other ideas for um how to write X thing let me know and I'll see you guys in my next video bye foreign
