Checking the Sub-structure of Your Literature Review

1. Checking the Sub-structure of Your Literature Review Please post your assignment to the course blog by Saturday, November 14

2. The Sub-structure of Academic Writing • Repetition • Emphasis • Approach from a different angle • Clarification • Linking • Forecasting • Overview • Signaling • Revealing the plan • Showing links • Directing attention • Give notice of a connection about to be made • Signposting • Tells the reader where they are • Headings, sub-headings • Topic sentences • Summary paragraphs

3. The Sub-structure of Your Lit Review • Make a new copy of your lit review • Go through it page by page, marking up (using the comment function in Word) where you have: • Forecasted (overarching ideas or structures) • Signaled (what is coming) • Signposted (where you are) • In the blog post itself, use the checklist on the next slide to analyze which of these have you done well and which need more work.

4. Checklist for Sub-structure • Forecasting: • Have you referred to all the sections, and/or the overall structure, in all your chapter introduction? • Is it clear, direct and concrete? • Signalling • Are there sufficient explicit signals for the development of your argument as you go along ? • Is each transition noted, and the direction you are moving made explicit? • Signposting • Is it impossible for your readers to lose their way while reading your text? • Is your heading structure unambiguous? (Could the reader understand the structure just by looking at the headings and does it match what you are doing?) • Do you have summary paragraphs either at the end of each section or the beginning of the following section?