From Literature Review Exploring Thesis’ Innovative Writing Phenomena

Literature review is one major component of a thesis, in which researchers connect the relationships of the related research to support the making of the research context at hand. Through critical reading, researchers understand the core concepts and being able to compare, contrast, and compose the new main themes of the literatures into thesis writing. Being able to write a good literature review is vital not only to show researchers’ own understanding of the field but also to support the creative research design. In order to understand the phenomenon of the literature reviews, particularly the work done by the Master theses, three research questions are raised: (1) what types of literature review are applied? (2) What mental strategies of literature review are used? And (3) what kinds of logic are employed in literature review? Content analysis is used in this study. Five theses with 106 analysis units are selected and analyzed. A recursive approach is processed in building the coding scheme. The research results reveal eight types of literature review, including contextual, definitional, historical, cut-in point, methodological, supportive, theoretical, empirical; six mental strategies, including analytical and judgmental, comparison, classification and induction, inductive and conclusive, standpoint of one’s own study, extensive; four kinds of writing logic, including integrated discursive, a lack of synthesis within literature, a lack to responsive to the main point, piling up of literature; and five kinds of innovative writing, including reframing, innovative reconceptualization, expansion on the thinking dimension, leading out the importance of the study, pointing out new cut-in point. The study suggests that better utilization of mental strategy and logic employment can further enhance integration of various literatures and thus framing a stronger context of the study. pp.4-25