How To Conduct & Write a Literature Review

Identify your research question and frame the literature review for analysis. Survey, analyze, and synthesize literature to build a cohesive argument about what we know and do not know.

Identify a topic that interests you to guide your literature review, narrow it through targeted scopes like adolescence with reading difficulties, and shape a focused research question.

Identify mentor texts from recent journals to model your literature review’s structure, tone, and analysis. Select two journals and 2–4 mentor texts, clarifying each text’s purpose to guide your writing.

Identify the right database, refine your research question, and run a focused keyword search. Track your results and year ranges in a spreadsheet to guide a rigorous literature review.

Outline your literature review with an introduction, background, methods, analysis, findings, and a conclusion that ties back to the original problem, then draft the headings and research questions.

Learn the best order for writing a literature review by starting with methods, building findings, refining analysis, and finalizing background, discussion, and introduction to avoid writer's block and excessive revisions.

Learn to craft a literature review conclusion that highlights two to three key issues with subheadings, explains why the research matters, and points to future directions and limitations.