Posted: December 2nd, 2015

Spelling Development for Kindergarten Children

A Suggested Format for Your Literature Review

1) Statements of the problem(s):
This part usually makes clear what the problems are. For example, students’ inability of dealing with expository texts, or students with less exposure to print before they come to school requiring more attention from teachers to keep up.
The description of the problem should be as detailed as possible. Usually some literature would be cited to support your argument about the existence of the problem(s). Your classroom experience can also be used as part of the description.
The length varies. I think one or two paragraphs of about 200 words might be a good one for this class.

2) Methodology
This section will focus on how you go about identifying and collecting the literature and how decide on using which ones from your search that has identified literature. In particular, you may want to pay attention to the issues of reliability and manageability. You need to set up the criteria through which identification of literature is accomplished. Usually in identifying scholarly literature, you will describe how you locate it, make decisions to include it, and rationales for its sufficiency on the topic.

3) Results and discussions
This section summarizes the results of your literature review and organizes your interpretations of the results. You need to present convincing evidence to illustrate that the arguments you are advancing to summarize the literature are valid or make sense. Usually a themed approach is the best way to synthesize literature on a topic. Do not report the results simply as annotated bibliography. In addition, your interpretations would usually have practical implications for teachers, which you should state clearly.

4) Conclusions
You need to conclude by pointing out the limitations of your literature review and the directions of possible future literature reviews on the topic.

5) References
This serves as a separate entity from the paper proper. Use APA style for reference list.

Some helpful notes about the review of literature paper
Procedures:
In reviewing the literature to write the paper, you would consider including the following procedural practices:

Collect peer-refereed journal articles only on the topic you have decided to pursue.

Read carefully and take AMPLE notes to familiarize yourself with the topic.

Consider the themes or central elements in the papers and try to organize them into a reasonable structure for writing.

Be careful about the conclusions and always use support from the literature to back up what you have been discussing.

Be careful editing and revising the paper. Invite someone to read it over for you if need be.

Structure of the paper:
State the purpose
Describe the search criteria (methods)
Discuss the literature you have collected and read
Draw conclusions
Reference section

What needs to be taken care of?
Writing, reasoning, APA style
Demonstrate your knowledge of the topic

How long?
It should be about 10 pages without counting the references. It needs to be typed with 12 point font. You need to clearly mark the page numbers. Please use a separate cover sheet.