#AcWriMo: Critical Engagement with the Literature

November is #AcWriMo! In the first of our academic writing-themed posts this month, Dr Kate Spencer-Bennett, Academic Skills Advisor in the Academic Skills Centre, considers how we might approach the literature in our field in a critical way.

You’ll often hear it said that good academic writing involves a ‘critical engagement’ with the literature. And you probably know that an effective literature review involves something more than a summary of everything that has been said on the topic. So, if Academic Writing Month (or #AcWriMo) is inspiring you to settle down to your desk, then you might be asking how you can comment on your reading in critical ways.

There are, of course, many ways to talk about your reading, but I often think that comments fall into one of three broad groups – the evaluative comment, the analytical comment, and the connection-making comment. Let’s consider each.

Evaluative comment

This type of comment reveals a critical engagement with the literature because it assesses the value of a piece of research. It asks, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the work? What is interesting, useful, or valuable about this article, book, or report? Where are its limitations? Thinking and reading in these ways might lead you to a more critical approach with your writing.

This kind of comment might begin, ‘This work is valuable because …’

Analytical comment

This type of comment seeks to look carefully at something and offer an interpretation. You might pick out one element of a text for close inspection. Is there an interesting argument being made? Is there a particular point, statistic, or telling phrase which you can point to? What does it suggest about the writer’s position?

This kind of comment might begin, ‘The use of the phrase x suggests …’

Connection-making comment

This type of comment aims to draw connections between different texts. Rather than summarising the research piece by piece, connection-making comments find agreements and disagreements in the literature. When you are reading, you could ask yourself how a particular journal article, for example, responds to what has been said on the topic before. What has been said since?

Or, alternatively, you might look at broader patterns within the research in your field. Can you begin to group what you have read by theme? Where do you see harmony in approach or viewpoint? Where are the tensions? These kinds of questions can lead you to synthesis in your writing. You bring different elements together to make something new.

This kind of comment might begin, ‘This work aligns with …’

When evaluating, analysing, and making connections you demonstrate a close reading of the literature and, in subtle ways, reveal your own perspective. Whether you feel that you are sometimes too descriptive, or just want to make sure that your own voice comes through as you discuss the existing research, perhaps these ideas could get you started next time you sit down to write.

Helen writes: find the gap

Continuing her occasional series, Writing Skills Advisor Helen Williams reflects on what it means to find a gap when writing your literature review.

The fact that doctoral research must be original and fill some kind of ‘gap’ in the literature is trotted out all the time, particularly to PGRs in their first year or so of study who may still be grappling with all the existing research on their topic. But how do you search for an absence? How do you identify something that isn’t there?

It can feel like a somewhat impossible task, especially if there are reams of articles, chapters and books that have been written on your topic. One answer could be changing the parameters of your research slightly; focusing on a specific and under-researched angle might tick that ‘originality’ box in a field that is saturated with research. However, if this isn’t practical, or you’re already fairly set on what research you want to carry out, it might be that you need to try to record your reading in a way that makes that gap more obvious.

What’s the difference between a systematic review and a literature review?

This is a question that I’m often asked, or I have a request to help someone with a systematic review, only to find that what they really need help with is a systematic search of the literature for a literature review.  So what is the difference?

Spotlight on the RDF: “Synthesising”

In this series of “Spotlight on…” posts, we’ll be delving into the detail of the descriptors in Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Each one of the sixty-three descriptors is a characteristic of an excellent researcher, and we’ll be looking at how UoB PGRs can develop these characteristics.

Image credit: National Eye Institute

Synthesis has a number of meanings in the OED, but the one that is relevant here is “the putting together of parts or elements so as to make up a complex whole” [1] and being able to put together parts and elements from the research literature and create a complex whole is a critical skill in literature review.  It’s relatively straight-forward to write a summary of the literature in your research area, but a proper literature review goes further and uses the existing literature to create a “complex whole” where new knowledge or understanding has been created.