Types of Writing: Literature Reviews

A literature review offers a summary, and sometimes a commentary, on a certain set of published works all pertaining to the same topic.

It often highlights the connections between specific articles or books and highlights how authors impact and build off of each other. Sometimes these reviews offer the author's opinion on the published works, while at other times they present the information in a neutral manner.

Because "literature review" contains the word "literature", most people assume this is something you would find in an English course. That is not necessarily the case!

Literature reviews are conducted in every field. For example:

• If you are studying to be a nurse you might be asked to conduct a literature review on a body of published work about caring for senior citizens with physical handicaps
•  If you are studying to become a teacher, you could be asked to write a literature review about teaching young children with autism

 In general, all fields have large bodies of published work, so a literrature review could be assigned in pretty much any course, especially at the upper levels.