Dissertation literature argumentative

When writing a dissertation literature review, an essential thing to consider is identifying the research gap. Identifying the gap is particularly important if your review forms part of a research proposal, as it will highlight the pertinence of your research – assuming that your research has been designed to fill this gap.

Adapt the outline and try writing a seven-sentence summary of your literature review argument. Like any argument, that of a literature review is built up through claims supported by evidence - in this case, evidence from the literature.

Argument. When you review the literature in your field you are conducting research about the research others have done, so the written review is a report of your findings. In the same way that you construct an argument to present the findings from your data, you need to make an argument in your literature review.

It becomes problematic if the skill in question needs to be measured out of context, because writing, for example, 'can only be evaluated in terms of the purposes for which it is intended' (Barton, 1994, p. 167). In each case, the link to the subject-matter of the thesis occurs at the beginning of a sentence.