This document provides guidance on writing an effective literature review. It explains that a literature review should convey the key points of existing research precisely, critically appraise prior studies from a neutral perspective, and synthesize results into a summary of what is known and still unknown. The review should define the research question, scope, and purpose. When examining sources, the writer should evaluate the problems addressed, theoretical perspectives, logical analyses, importance to the topic, and ease of understanding. Finally, an effective literature review presents themes in sections with related theories and quotes sources in context of the research questions.

1. Summarizing “The Literature Review”
Hajime Ito
Original page: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

2. What is the concepts of the literature writing?
• Your thesis should not be just a sheet of paper which list the results of your
research.
You should mention basic knowledge, references, good points, and bad point as well as the
result of the research you did.
To help with the understanding of the reader, The following techniques are needed.
・information seeking:
Convey the key points precisely. Who is the person in charge of
each method(manual/computerized)? What is the basic idea on your thesis?
・critical appraisal:
Estimate the originality and the rightfulness of your research from
a neutral viewpoint.

3. Policy to literature review
You must mention the following things
• Make it clearly what existing article that caused your study.
• Synthesize results into a summary of what things being solved and
not solved.
• Explain the background and the issues of your research field.
• Define the questions to need a further study.

4. Navigation for how to write your article
For reviewing, ask yourself questions like these:
• Reader can understand specific thesis, problem, or research question?
• What the purpose of the chapter which you are writing now?
• What is the scope of your study? Do your thesis derailment from there?
• Is it satisfy information seeking? Does your research have enough accuracy?
• Have you critically analyzed the literature?
• Did you consider a study from the viewpoint of other articles?
• Will the reader find your literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?

5. Examination the articles in your thesis 1
• Has the author formulated problems and issues?
• Is it enough to clearly defined about its scope, severity, relevance?
• Is there more effectively approach from another perspective?
• What is the author's research orientation?
• What is the framework of research field?
• Are theoretical and research perspectives associated with topic?
• Does the author evaluate his literature logically?

6. Examination the articles in your thesis 2
• Is the analysis of the data has accuracy? How the result came from?
• Does the author write article for a popular readership?
• Is the structure of the argument logically and based on cause-effect
relationship?
• Why does the article important for your thesis?
• Easy to understanding of the problems
• Useful when you introduce the issue

7. Final Notes
• A literature review should be a piece of discursive prose
✖ every paragraph beginning with the name of a previous researcher.
✖ a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature
Instead,
• Divide it into sections that present themes or identify trends by
related theory.
• You don’t have to try to list all the bibliographic references, but to
quote it when your thesis mention to research question.

8. Summaries
What you have to do when you write a bibliography that gives a
summary of each of the entries is,
• Summarize each item briefly
• Inspect whether it is related to the theme
• Decide the range where you touch
• Grouping items into sections and summarize the relationships
• Write each paragraph by focused theme in the section