ENG 112 Literature Review

ENG 112 Literature Review Instructions

For our second Unit in ENG-112, you will address a research gap in a discipline relevant to your own career track or planned academic focus area. (If you have not decided on a focus area yet, work in an area you think you might pursue later on.)But first, you’ll need to identify an actual research gap.

Luckily, there’s a genre of writing for just that purpose: the Literature Review. This work will form the background for your Problem-Solution Paper. By assembling, summarizing, and organizing materials from at least six peer-reviewed articles, you will cover the major past findings related to a research question that is significant to your field.

This will allow you to confidently identify the research gap that your next paper, the Problem-Solution Paper, will resolve. It will also give you a strong initial research background ina narrow part of your career or academic field, giving you both information about it and familiarity with research writing in that discipline.

Minimum Assignment Requirements

• Identify and introduce an issue in your discipline by explaining why people in the discipline find it important.
• Summarize findings from at least six peer-reviewed sources, and ideally eight to twelve peer-reviewed sources, and incorporate them into your paper.
• Group these summarized findings into at leastthree distinct topic groupings according to common themes or a timeline of past knowledge.
• Synthesize related findings and ideas in sentences within paragraphs and use summary and paraphrase rather than direct quotation.
• Organize both paragraphs and their topic groupings to give readers a series of linked “snapshots” of the current research on a particular issue
• Conclude with a paragraph that identifies a significant, real research gap that clearly emerges from the “snapshots” of prior research and explains why it is important to address this “research gap.
• Use APA signal phrases and an objective, third-person, and informative tone and style; see the templates on pages 206-207, 228, and 230 of They Say/I Say and pages 110-115 in The Little Seagull.
• Create a polished, well-formatted APA document.
• Use proper APA citation throughout, making effective, thoughtful choices about when to quote and when to paraphrase.
• Include a correctly formatted References Page, which is not counted in the page length.
• Employ good paragraph and sentence structure, including effective transitions, clear and grammatical writing, and professional but reader-friendly language.
• Write 2 to 2.5 (two-and-a-half) full pages, not counting the title page, abstract, and References.

The final version of the Literature Review is due in Sakai at 11:55 PM on10/27, but there is a no-penalty “grace period” until 11:55 PM on 10/30. The further into the “grace period” we are, the less likely it is that extensions will be given. No credit will be given for the paper beyond the end of the grace period.

As you draft the paper, make sure you label files clearly and save your work in more than one place. I provide a space on the course Sakai site called the “Assignment Sandbox” that can be used for file storage, and you may also consider free online storage spaces such as Google Drive.

The final paper score is affected by draft submission. Submitting a complete draft of at least four well-developed paragraphs and two full pages (not counting the title page, abstract, and APA References) that covers all the required assignment sections will provide full draft credit. An APA References page and APA in-text citations are also required as part of this draft. Incomplete or missing drafts will result in grade caps on the final paper as explained in the draft instructions.