LANG1402 Chap.8 Building a Literature Review by Theme
Building a Literature Review by Theme
Where twelve per cent of the grade sits
The synthesis criterion carries twelve per cent of the whole course grade, and the published descriptors are unusually direct about what separates the bands.
The strong band shows three credible sources skilfully selected and justified, with ideas integrated to reveal purposeful connections and differences and used in the discussion as evidence and perspectives that answer the question. The marginal band shows sources summarised in isolation. Everything in this chapter is about moving from the second shape to the first.
The first thing to accept is that not every interesting source belongs in the review: a source earns its place only if it provides evidence that speaks to what you asked.
The matrix, and the direction you read it
A synthesis matrix is a table with themes down the side and your three sources across the top.
You fill it by reading each source and recording what it says under each theme, and what becomes visible is the convergence, the divergence and the gap that only one of the three fills. The whole lesson is in the direction: you fill it one source at a time, which is vertical work, and you write from it one theme at a time, which is horizontal. Writing in the direction you filled produces three consecutive summaries.
Themes are usually easier to find than students expect, because they are the sub-questions hiding inside the guiding question.
Signals and verb strength fail independently
Each completed row becomes a paragraph, and the remaining question is what relationship the row shows.
Agreement, contrast and extension each have their own signal words, and choosing the wrong one tells a reader something the evidence does not support. Reporting verbs are sorted separately by how strongly an author commits, from neutral through stronger to cautious. The signal describes the relationship between sources; the verb describes each source alone.
Both have to be right, and getting one right does not protect the other.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Why not every interesting source belongs in the review
- 02
Themes down the side, sources across the top
- 03
Filling by source, writing by theme
- 04
Finding themes inside the sub-questions of your own question
- 05
Agreement, contrast and extension, and the signals for each
- 06
Neutral, stronger and cautious reporting verbs
- 07
Why each paragraph has to cite at least two sources
- 08
The four phases of the synthesis activity, in order
Write one themed paragraph from a filled matrix row
- 2Open with a claim about the literature in your own voice.
- 3Bring in two sources joined by an appropriate signal.
- 2Close by saying what they jointly establish, hedged.
Key terms
- Synthesis Matrix
- A table placing themes against sources so that agreements, differences and gaps become visible before any drafting begins.
- Themed Paragraph
- A paragraph organised around one idea that cuts across several sources, rather than around one source and everything it happens to say.
- Synthesis Signal
- A phrase such as consistent with this, in contrast, or building on this, which names the relationship between two sources in a single move.
- Extension
- The relationship in which one source takes another's point somewhere new rather than repeating or contradicting it.
- Verb Strength
- How strongly a reporting verb commits its author, running from neutral through stronger to cautious, and needing to match how strongly the source itself commits.
- Counterpoint
- A position that cuts against the pattern the other evidence suggests, which a synthesis has to place rather than ignore.
- Source Justification
- The stated reason a particular source was chosen, which the published descriptors require alongside the source itself.
Building a Literature Review by Theme FAQ
What actually counts as synthesis rather than summary?
A paragraph that opens with a claim about the literature in your own voice, brings in two or more sources joined by a relationship word, and closes by saying what they jointly establish. If every paragraph names one author and reports what that author found, the section is a set of summaries however well each one is written.
How do I find themes if my three sources seem to be about different things?
Write out the sub-questions inside your guiding question and use those as rows. A question about barriers has rows for physical, social and informational barriers; a question about change over time has rows for direction, explanations and disagreements about measurement. If a source populates none of your rows, its relevance score was optimistic.
One of my sources appears in only one row of the matrix. Is that a problem?
It is a signal with two possible causes. Either the source genuinely addresses only one theme, in which case it is weaker than you scored it, or your themes were drawn from the other two sources and do not describe what it is about. Try naming a theme it would populate richly: if you can, the themes were the problem.
Can I use a tool to draft the synthesis for me?
The lesson's four-phase activity puts your own sorting and outlining first, uses a tool only afterwards, and then rewrites from your outline rather than from the draft it produced. The assessed skill is phase three, where you add a sentence the supplied items do not by themselves contain, because a paragraph carrying nothing more than those items is a summary whoever assembled it.
Assessment move
Build the matrix while you are reading rather than afterwards, and add a fourth row that records what each source cannot be asked to support. That row is what stops a sentence in your discussion outrunning your own reference list, and it costs one line per source at the moment you are already looking at them.
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