So, You Have to Write a Literature Review A Guided Workbook for Engineers

Is a literature review looming in your future? Are you procrastinating on writing a literature review at this very moment? If so, this is the book for you. Writing often causes trepidation and procrastination for engineering students—issues that compound while writing a literature review, a type of academic writing most engineers are never formally taught. Consider this workbook as a "couch-to-5k" program for engineering writers rather than runners: if you complete the activities in this book from beginning to end, you will have a literature review draft ready for revision and content editing by your research advisor.

So, You Have to Write a Literature Review presents a dynamic and practical method in which engineering students—typically late-career undergraduates or graduate students—can learn to write literature reviews, and translate genre-based writing instruction into easy-to-follow, bite-sized activities and content. Written in a refreshingly conversational style while acknowledging that writing is quite difficult, Catherine Berdanier and Joshua Lenart leverage their unique disciplinary backgrounds with decades of experience teaching academic engineering writing in this user-friendly workbook.

DR. CATHERINE BERDANIER is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. She holds an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Her research focuses mainly on graduate-level engineering education with emphasis on engineering writing and communication, attrition, and persistence. Her research has been funded through multiple NSF awards. She is the Director of the Engineering Cognitive Research Laboratory (E-CRL), where she and her graduate students investigate questions concerning the human side of engineering through a variety of quantitative, qualitative, experimental, and analytical methods.

DR. JOSHUA LENART is an Associate Instructor with the Communication, Leadership, Ethics, and Research (CLEAR) Program at the University of Utah where he also received his Ph.D. in Writing and Rhetoric Studies and now teaches technical communication for the College of Engineering. His teaching expertise includes administrative and organizational writing, grant writing, teambuilding, and strategic communications. His research expertise focuses on natural resource management policy as it relates to landscape-scale impacts on wildlife habitat, hydrologic systems, community resilience, adaptation planning, and long-term land use conservation. For the past five years, he has led various transdisciplinary research projects examining land, water, and wildlife resource management conflicts vis-à-vis policy, stakeholder input, feasibility and environmental impact assessment, and collective impact engagement.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Why is Writing so HARD? Overcoming Barriers to Writing and Making Time to Write1.1 Writing as a Cognitive, Social, and Affective Activity

1.2 Time Management, Self-Discipline, and the Writing/Research Timeline 5

1.3 Accountability is an Essential Part of Writing 6

1.3.1 Shut Up & Write Groups 7

1.3.2 Accountability Partners 8

1.3.3 Schedule Your Writing in a Scientific Way 9

1.3.4 Deliberate and Distributed Practice 9

1.3.5 Bribery 10

Chapter 2:  What is the Point of a Literature Review, Anyway?!

2.1 The Literature Review Serves as an Argument to Establish a Gap in Prior Research 2

2.2 The Literature Review Establishes the Author’s Credibility 3

2.3 The Literature Review Prepares Readers to Interpret and Appreciate Your Findings 6

2.4 Envisioning Your Audience 7

2.5 Deliberate Language Choices Support the Functions of the Literature Review 8

Chapter 3:  Gathering and Storing Literature 1

3.1 What to Cite? The Difference between Types of Academic Publications 1

3.2 What NOT to Cite: Types of Documents to Avoid Citing 3

3.3 Searching for Literature 6

3.4 Saving and Storing your Literature 7

3.5 Reference Managers 12

3.6 Your Turn: Collecting Literature 12

3.7 But How Many References Do I Need in my Literature Review?! 12

Chapter 4: Reading Strategies and Remembering What You Read

4.1 Deciding Whether to Skim or Read 1

4.2 What are You Focusing On? 3

4.3 Effective Methods for Skimming Literature 4

4.4 Reading Scholarly Literature 6

4.5 Taking Notes and Starting an Annotated Bibliography (or: Thanking your “Future Self”) 6

Chapter 5: Finding Connections between Literature 1

5.1 Identifying Overarching Themes and Topics in Literature 2

5.2 Identifying “Synthesis” of Literature in Action 5

5.3 Drawing Connections between Literature 8

5.4 Justifying “Gaps in the Literature” 9

Chapter 6: Organizing Your Literature Review 1

6.1 Envisioning the Macrostructure of Your Literature Review 3

6.2 A Discussion on Topic Sentences: The First Sentence of the Paragraph 13

6.3 Creating a Macrostructure for Your Own Literature Review 14

Chapter 7:  Writing the “Ugly Draft” 1

7.1 Twelve Steps to Building Your Literature Review 1

7.2 Strategies to Help you Build and Sculpt Paragraphs: Introducing Rhetorical Moves and Steps in Genre Maps

7.3 If You are Not into Outlines…Leverage Who You Are As a Writer to Get That Ugly Draft on Paper! 6

Chapter 8:  Using Citations to Connect Ideas 1

8.1 The Proximity of the Citation to the Reference Carries Meaning 1

8.1.1 String Citations 2

8.1.2 Topic Citations 3

8.1.3 End-of-Sentence Citations 5

8.1.4 Direct Citation 6

8.2 Literature Occurs in the Past, but a Literature Synthesis Points to YOUR Future 8

8.3 The “Accordion Stage” of Writing a Literature Review will Hone The Density of Citations and Conciseness

8.4 The Literature Review is a Political Document 13

Chapter 9:  Revising the “BIG Four” Literature Review Faux Pas 1

9.1 Ineffective or Missing Topic Sentence. 1

9.1.1 All sentences that follow the topic or umbrella sentence should directly support that first sentence 2

9.1.2 There is rarely a need to directly cite one article or author in the topic sentence. 3

9.2 Fluffy writing 5

9.3 Globalisms 6

9.4 Lack of connection or synthesis between topics or articles 9

Chapter 10:  Am I Done Yet? 1

10.1 Self-Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself 1

Chapter 11:  Interpreting Advisor Feedback 1

11.1 Conclusion: Our Wishes for You 3

Chapter 12:  Theory Behind the Practice 1

12.1 On Genre Studies and Moves-Steps Analysis 3

12.2 On Technical Writing for Engineers 6

12.3 On Writing Literature Reviews 7

12.4 On Grammar Editing and Revision Strategies 7

12.5 Last Thoughts 7

References 7

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