Rationalism

Guidance for the completion of the literature review
The aim of the literature review is for you to show the level of engagement that you had with the reading for the presentation.
This will highlight the key reading that you did and what you felt was useful/interesting (or not!) about the reading and how it helped you in preparing for the presentation.

The marking scheme for this will be as follows:

Range of reading 5%

Hopefully you will have done a lot of reading and you can list this in a bibliography at the end (this can be excluded from your 1000 word limit for the review).

For the literature review choose three things that you read which can show the depth and breadth of reading that you did in order to allow you to be in a position to contribute to the presentation. If you chose to narrowly focus on one area of the presentation you can still get good marks as long as you show how this reading enabled you to prepare for your contribution. Ideally though your reading will have allowed you to answer the question in its entirety. You need to justify your choice of reading by stating what it was you were researching into and what questions you were looking to answer and how you feel your chosen sources enabled you to do this.

Description of reading 5%

You will effectively summarise in a concise and clear way the main points that the readings are making

Analysis of reading 5%

You will critically engage with the reading by highlighting how valid you thing the points raised in the reading are. To what extent did you agree/disagree with these?

Application of reading to the topic 5%

Show how and where you were able to use the reading in helping you to answer the questions that you set out to answer.

It is up to you how you organised your review but I would suggest the following

A very brief introduction which sets out the topic you were looking at and the questions that you set out to answer. Refer to the range of reading that you did and include all sources in a bibliography and then state which three you are going to focus on and why.

Then look at each source in turn. Describe, analyse and show how you were able to apply. There is the possibility that you might want to compare and contrast points raised in the selected reading with others that you have selected or which differ and agree with other things that you read.

End with a brief conclusion as to how satisfied you were that the reading did enable you to both cover the questions that you were answering in sufficient depth.

Good Luck