There are a lot of assignments that you will have to complete during your academic life. Some of them are exciting and rather easy to prepare. Others are daunting and challenging. Making critical literature reviews refers to the latter category.
Yes, for the great majority of students, writing a critical review of literature on any topic causes a lot of difficulties. However, you have nothing to do but learn overcoming them. We can help you with this and provide several useful recommendations.
General guidelines for writing critical literature reviews
- The main purpose of completing this task is to demonstrate your critical thinking skills, ability to synthesize and analyze information;
- Usually, critical literature reviews are 20-30 pages long;
- As a rule, students are asked to review 15-20 sources.
Specific recommendations for writing critical literature reviews
The main question you probably have right now is what a critical analysis actually means or how to evaluate sources of literature critically.
Well, below you will find some criteria for evaluating literature and things you need to pay attention to when writing a critical literature review.
Author
What is the author’s institutional affiliation, education, previous works, experience, etc? How many times have you seen this name before? Try to avoid works of unknown authors and do not include them into your critical literature review.
Date of publication
When was the work published? Is it up-to-date or outdated? Outdated works do not include some recent discoveries and new knowledge, thus, they should not be used if you want to make a good critical literature review.
Target audience
Was the work written for general or specialized audience? Is it written on the elementary or advanced level?
Content
Does the author introduce facts, opinions or his/her work looks like propaganda and gives biased information? Are the arguments, evidences that the author uses reasonable?
So, good luck with your critical literature reviews. And do not forget about our writers who can help you with any assignment, e.g. literature analysis essays.







