ETI 321 READING AND WRITING SCIENTIFIC TEXTS

ETI 321 READING AND WRITING SCIENTIFIC TEXTS

Last week we • Listened to your research procedure, • Saw whether you applied MLA style or not in your bibliography, • Talked about hypothesis, • Talked about sampling techniques and basic statistics • Discussed some concepts like ‘variable’, ‘operationalization’, ‘testing hypothesis’, ‘data’, ‘representativeness’, ‘sampling’.

You wrote a paper including the following • Title of your study • Introduction • Aim and scope, research questions • Method • Bibliography

Your research is something like this: • Introduction • Aim and scope of the research • Theoretical background • Literature Review • Method • Analysis • Conclusion • References

This week we will talk about: • Literature review, what is literature review? what is relevant in your literature review chapter, how to keep track of your readings, organizing the relevant literature,

Literature reviewdefinition 1 • A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. • A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.From http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature_review.html

Literature reviewdefinition 2 A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment (sometimes in the form of an annotated bibliography—see the bottom of the next page), but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

Literature reviewdefinition 3 Not to be confused with a book review, a literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic. http://library.ucsc.edu/help/howto/write-a-literature-review

Literature reviewdefinition 4 • The aim of a literature review is to show your reader (your tutor) that you have read, and have a good grasp of, the main published work concerning a particular topic or question in your field. This work may be in any format, including online sources. It may be a separate assignment, or one of the introductory sections of a report, dissertation or thesis. In the latter cases in particular, the review will be guided by your research objective or by the issue or thesis you are arguing and will provide the framework for your further work. • It is very important to note that your review should not be simply a description of what others have published in the form of a set of summaries, but should take the form of a critical discussion, showing insight and an awareness of differing arguments. http://www.ssdd.uce.ac.uk/learner/New%20page.htm

Literature review Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas • information seeking: the ability to scan the literature efficiently, using manual or computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books • critical appraisal: the ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies. • A literature review must do these things be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known identify areas of controversy in the literature formulate questions that need further research http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

The purposes of the review are: • to define and limit the problem you are working on • to place your study in an historical perspective • to avoid unnecessary duplication • to evaluate promising research methods • to relate your findings to previous knowledge and suggest further research http://www.ssdd.uce.ac.uk/learner/New%20page.htm

Warning!! A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review.

Literature reviews should comprise the following elements: • An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review • Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative theses entirely) • Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others • Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research http://library.ucsc.edu/help/howto/write-a-literature-review

the literature review should • compare and contrast different authors' views on an issue • group authors who draw similar conclusions • criticiseaspects of methodology • note areas in which authors are in disagreement • highlight exemplary studies • highlight gaps in research • show how your study relates to previous studies • show how your study relates to the literature in general • conclude by summarising what the literature says Caulley (1992)

Literature reviewAsk yourself questions like these: • What is the specific thesis, problem, or research question that my literature review helps to define? • What type of literature review am I conducting? Am I looking at issues of theory? methodology? policy? quantitative research (e.g. on the effectiveness of a new procedure)? qualitative research (e.g., studies )? • What is the scope of my literature review? What types of publications am I using (e.g., journals, books, government documents, popular media)?

Literature reviewAsk yourself questions like these: • How good was my information seeking? Has my search been wide enough to ensure I've found all the relevant material? Has it been narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material? Is the number of sources I've used appropriate for the length of my paper? • Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective? • Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful? http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

Textual features of literature review • Linking words are important. If you are grouping together writers with similar opinions, you would use words or phrases such as: similarly, in addition, also, again • More importantly, if there is disagreement, you need to indicate clearly that you are aware of this by the use of linkers such as: however, on the other hand, conversely, nevertheless • At the end of the review you should include a summary of what the literature implies, which again links to your hypothesis or main question.

Textual features of literature review • Cohesive ties make your research intelligible and orderly. Try to use the following cohesive ties as well as others: As outlined above... As we saw in section 1.3... See below... Before proceeding further... At this point, let us summarize the main steps of the argument so far... On the other hand, consider now a rather different interpretation...

Documentation conventions in the text: references • “You need to document all your sources unless the idea is general public knowledge or something that you have thought of yourself.” (Williams and Chesterman 2002: 103) • In the following you will find the means to give reference: Toury (1995: 134) describes this as... In a later paper, however, Herman argues (1999) that... In Laviosa (1998) the evidence discussed is ...

Documentation conventions in the text: references Several authors have made this point (see e.g. Gile 1995, Gillham 2000a, Yin 1994). Snell-Hornby (1989: 45-69) suggests that... Yet, there remain a number of problems with this approach. (See further Catford 1965, Nida 1964, and especially Hatim 2001) • If you refer to A via a reference to B, you should refer to your source in the following way: Hempel (1952, as cited in Toury 1995: 9) claims that...

quotations • Baker claims (1995: 13) that “......” • Baker (1995: 13) makes the following claim: “...” This is presumably what Baker is implying when she argues (1995: 13) that “....”

Kiss your readers!!! • KISS is an acronym used for a favorable style: Keep It Short and Simple

Homework! You are supposed to write the literature review chapter of your research. Kolay gelsin!

ETI 321 READING AND WRITING SCIENTIFIC TEXTS