Part 2: Advancing Your Synthesis: Writing the Intermediate Draft of Your Literature Review

Overview

By completing your Part 1 Outline, you’ve done much of the preparatory work in analyzing, synthesizing, and organizing your intermediate draft. You have already analyzed the literature on your selected topic, synthesized how each source contributes to the current state of knowledge on your selected topic, and organized the current thinking that surrounds your research topic by key issues and sub-issues that address the intersections/connections and repetitions of the sources’ concerns regarding your research topic.

Now you are ready, in Part 2, to advance your literature review by writing your intermediate Project 3 draft.

Skills & Strategies

This Part 2 Assignment will help you to

• demonstrate responsiveness within an established disciplinary context to new information, experiences, and ideas through a process of re-evaluating the ideas and/or approaches
• identify and develop organizational strategies that contribute to the effective delivery of information and argument
• analyze rhetorical effectiveness of a variety of print and non-print sources
• evaluate relevant sources according to their contexts, rhetorical situation, usefulness, and credibility for specific research tasks
• summarize research sources through effective annotation, note-taking, quotation, citation, and paraphrase
• synthesize disparate or conflicting thoughts when evaluating questions/problems to form cohesive and collaborative solutions

Description (and Step by Step)

Part 2 is a 1,000 – 1,200-word literature review draft that advances the current state of knowledge on your selected topic in an organized pattern.

While the Part 1 Outline helped you to identify the sources’ contribution of knowledge on your research topic, frame your thesis statement, and define the key issues/sub-issues that will facilitate your organizing your literature review, the writing of the intermediate draft will extend your literature review as you more fully demonstrate the current state of knowledge surrounding your selected topic.

At least six sources are required for this Intermediate Draft. Your six sources should include a combination of public and scholarly sources.

The following steps will help you to further develop your Part 2 Intermediate Draft:

1. Consider your purpose in writing the literature review: to demonstrate your understanding of the current state of thinking on your research topic by synthesizing various viewpoints and logically organizing information.
2. In Part 2, you will aim for a clear and cohesive essay that integrates those key issues and literature details that reveal the current state of knowledge on your research topic.
3. Begin with a creative title that reflects the current state of knowledge of your research topic.
4. In the introduction, explain the overarching focus of your literature review and establish why your research topic being reviewed is important. Conclude your introduction with your thesis statement, the sentence or two that reveals the current state of knowledge.
5. Divide the body of your literature review into the key issues and sub-issues you identified in your analysis of the current literature. As a reminder, these key issues and sub-issues represent the major themes, points, topics, important trends, intersections, and findings about which researchers agree or disagree. The key issues/sub-issues will represent an organized section of the literature review and will be used as a path for further discussion in the body of your literature review.
6. Introduce each key issue/sub-issue with a topic sentence that describes the synthesis. Details that follow the topic sentence should describe the literature and include source identification and evidence in the form of examples, brief quotes, and paraphrases.
7. Be sure to use clear transitions as you introduce sub-issues and sources.
8. Provide source citations according to the required guidelines.
9. Write a conclusion to your literature review that highlights the presented evidence and that demonstrates any possibilities for future research/action.
10. Proofread your literature review.

Helpful Hints

1. Focus on analysis, rather than a summary/description of what research has been done.
2. Divide body sections into key issues/sub-issues, rather than on the individual work of the researchers.
3. Review the topic sentences of each paragraph to be sure that they link back to your thesis and demonstrate a logical progression of ideas and evidence from beginning to end.

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