1st attempt at writing research paper - A Lit Review

Hi,

This is an intro to a 1:1 lit review. Pls comment of the style of writing, grammar and anything deemded to be commented. Thank you.

"It is really not about laptops. It's about what the one-to-one laptops enable in terms of new ways of teaching and learning." (article 15)

In 1985, Apple Computer Inc collaborated with public schools and other institutions that pioneered a one-to-one computer access project (article 21). The Apple Classrooms of Future (ACOT) provided teachers and students in five public school sites with personal computers for school and home use (article 42). Four years later, the first one-to-one laptop program was launched in Australia at the Ladies Methodist College (article 43). Since then, one-to-one laptop initiatives expanded rapidly across the globe. In 1996, Microsoft Corporation and Toshiba America worked in partnership and initiated the Anytime Anywhere Learning (AAL) project. 26 private and public schools were involved in the pilot study (article 41). Maine's laptop program is by far the largest laptop project to date. Entitled the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the project involved 36,000 laptops, 33,000 students and 3000 teachers (article 26). Soon, other states began to follow suit. One-to-one laptop programs have also made their presence in many places such as UK, France, Canada, Austria, China, Israel and Malaysia. In local context, one-to-one laptop programs are scarce. In 2005, SRI (article 32) reported their findings on laptops program implemented in two secondary schools. Another smaller self-initiated program was launched by ISS in 2008. At current, the program is still on going (ISS website). Although one-to-one laptop started about 20 years ago, research in the field of English language and Literature teaching/learning are scanty. Our scan on 45 articles, including journal publications, technical reports and websites, yielded only 20% of such studies. Most one-to-one laptops are multidisciplinary or discussed on other specific topics such as professional development, benefits and students achievements.

The writing is fine. But that is a lot of referencing in one paragraph. Normally, a lit review takes several paragraphs for each source, and goes on for 8-20 pages or so, depending on the paper and topic.

So you'll have to definitely expand this.

Thanks Stephen. Most of those are facts that I got from several Literatures. So i thought I should cite them. Am I right to say that I would need to elaborate a bit more before further references. What i intended to do in this intro was to provide facts and and give the widest overview. Then in following paragraphs/sections, I elaborate the details.

In the intro, you just mainly want to introduce the subject and what you plan to do specifically. The lit review is a separate section. For each of your references, introduce them one at a time with explanatory information following. Then discuss the next one, same way, and so on until you have discussed them all. That gives you credibility and leads the reader to where you want them to be.

Yes, agree that you should introduce the subject you are reviewing in the first paragraph. This paragraph can be a one or two sentence summary from all the literature that you have read. Example: Teaching and learning English are still scanty today despite the availability of one-to-one laptops in almost every school. (I assume this is the topic of your research... but I see this objective only at the end of the paragraph. Your reader had to figure out what your intentions are).

Let the reader hear your opinion first, from all the literature that you have read (and synthesized), then support your statements with what you have read-- this is where other researcher's findings come in, which you cite.

In my school, we call the pattern of referencing too many other authors' work in a block of writing 'patchwork'. It's very easy to patchwork the literature review portion of the research paper, and forget to put in what your thoughts are after reviewing the literature, and how the literature you have read guided you towards your own research. Also, one paragraph made up of several citations is very difficult to read. Break it into several paragraphs.