GETTING TO WRITE YOUR PAPER

WORKSHOP #2

UNIVERSIDAD DE LA AMAZONIA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIN
ELT PROGRAM

ACADEMIC WRITING SEMINAR

A LITERATURE REVIEW ARTICLE. GENERAL CONCEPTS AND

CONSIDERATIONS

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1. Read the concepts about a LITERATURE REVIEW ARTICLE. Discuss them with
your partner.

You have surveyed an experimental literature and arrived at conclusions you believe are
worth sharing with the widercommunity. Now it is time to write. To publish. To tell the
world what you have learned. (Daryl J. Bem of Cornell University)

Review articles, including meta-analyses, are critical evaluations of material that has already
been published. By organizing, integrating, and evaluating previously published material, the
author of a review article considers the progress of current research toward clarifying a
problem. (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association)

A review article is a tutorial in that the author

Defines and clarifies the problem;
Summarizes previous investigations in order to inform the reader of the state of current
research;
Identifies relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and
Suggests the next step or steps in solving the problem (Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association)

Write one definition on your own. Discuss it with your team

Challenge partner(s). Share it with the class.

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Adapted from: Paper from the Office of Academic and Regional Affairs by the A.T. Still Research Institute, KCOM www.kcom.edu
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2. Talking about the process. Brainstorming ideas.

Whats the Point of Your Article?

Whenever busy people such as your examiners read anything, they are likely to ask,
Why am I reading this?
Why should I read this?
What is the point?
The answer examiners have after reading your review article should not be that they
have to read this because the project was assigned. And your answer to the question,
Why are you writing this? better not be Because I had to in order to pass.
One of the most significant challenges any scholar, researcher, educator, writer must
overcome is the relevancy question, the answer to the question, So What?
Everyone can write well about things they have thought a lot about. So, think about it a
lot:
Why are these articles interesting to you?
Why did you choose to write about them?
Do they present a new procedure?
Is there a significant gap in the literature?
Do these articles contribute important new knowledge to the field?
Are these articles mistaken?
Are you disagreeing with them?

Anytime you are writing, you are making an argument. Everything is an argument. If you
learn the components of an argument, your article will be successful:

The Toulmin Argument

Claim: The claim is the statement you wish to

make.
Example: Dont eat the mushrooms!
Reason: The logic behind the claim.
Example: Because they are poisonous!
Warrant: The warrant answers the question of So
What? that is posed to the reason. It is often
implied and often obvious, but arguments win or fail
dependent on whether people accept the warrant.
Example: Eating poisonous mushrooms will
make you sick!
Evidence: Supports the reason.
Example: Medical literature shows that the
mushrooms you intend to eat are poisonous and will
make you sick.
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WORKSHOP #2

In your writing, you need to figure out your own argument.

What is your claim?
What are your reasons?
So What?
What is your evidence?
Is it fact-based, anecdotal, or emotional?

3. Audience
It might seem obvious who your audience is the evaluator of your review article.
Again, this is not good enough.
For one thing, do you know this person?
What do you know about them?
And is this the only person ever who will be reading your review article?
Instead of focusing on your reviewer,
Think of a specific journal you would like to submit your review article to.
Would you like to share your observations with school administrators so a policy can be
changed?
Do you think a formerly criticized procedure/method/other should be re-visited?
Would you like to share new information or a new procedure method/other with other
teachers/in-training teachers/other?
Are you interested in sharing something with other student teachers?
Or is your angle perhaps the students themselves or their
parents/relatives/institutions/peers/others?

Your audience will give your writing a focus and an edge. Knowing who your audience is
helps you rhetorically. Most pieces of writing attempt one of
two purposes:
a. to make the audience see something differently
b. to make the audience act on the information in
a specific way

What are you hoping review article will accomplish? You will be essentially arguing for one of the above two
things to happen.

4. Pre-Writing and Brainstorming

You are finally ready to begin writing. This will be your warm up lap, the writing that will
help you get where you need to go, so view it that way without planning, necessarily, to use
it in your final product.
4.1. The first thing you are going to do is write for 30
minutes without stopping and think of every possible angle of your review
Challenge
article, writing without editing. This is called thick description. Then, you
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WORKSHOP #2

are going to walk away from this piece for a few minutes.
4.2. You will do two more pre-writes of 30 minutes each
during a 4-hour period. These pre-writes are essential to producing a good review article. It is here
that you will discover what you think is interesting about your angle, who you are trying to
reach, and it is here that you will remember little details that might otherwise have escaped you.
After you have finished your third pre-write and left it for an hour or so, examine all three of
your pre-writes and see what you find most interesting in all of them.

4.3. COMPARE YOUR PIECE OF WRITING WITH THAT OF YOUR PARTNER.

RESPOND:
What have you repeated? Now you are ready to take your
What seems to be the most important theme or three pre-writes and begin writing a
detail? rough draft. And I do mean rough.
Who seems to be the most logical audience for Again, you are not thinking in
this review article? terms of revision.
What can you argue for?
You are thinking on paper and
generating material.

HOMEWORK

5. Finish your first draft. Print it and share it in the next session.
6. Please refer to the following links. WRITE A SUMMARY (150 words) about them:
http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol9/V9p181-212Levy99.pdf

7. Check out the charts below. Create your own method and table for classifying the
information for your review article. Explain it to the class.
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WORKSHOP #2

(http://www.webology.org/2015/v12n2/a139.pdf )
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(http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3672&context=cais )
 GETTING TO WRITE YOUR PAPER

WORKSHOP #2

(http://slideplayer.com/slide/5309159/17/images/27/The+Literature+Review+Abstracting+the
+references.jpg )