- Email: [email protected]
Book review: Literature reviewing
Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69 www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap
Book reviews: Literature reviewing Telling a research story: Writing a literature review, Christine B. Feak, John M. SwalesVolume 2 of the revised & expanded edition of English in today’s research world, The Michigan Series in English for Academic and Professional Purposes. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press (2009), ISBN 978-0-472-03336-2, £10.56/U.S.$16.00. (98 pp þ xiv) Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper, Arlene Fink, (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications (2010), ISBN 978-1-4129-7189-8, £32.00/U.S.$53.95, (253 pp þ xviii) Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination, Chris Hart, 8 printings. London: Sage Publications (1998), ISBN 978-0-7619-5975-5, £20.99/U.S.$51.95, (230 pp þ x) The literature review: Six steps to success, Lawrence A. Machi, Brenda T. McEvoy. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, A Sage Company (2009), ISBN 978-1-4129-6135-6, £17.99/$U.S.28.95, (164 pp þ xvi) The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students, Diana Ridley. London: Sage Publications (2008), ISBN 9781-4129-3426-8, £17.99/U.S.$36.95, (170 pp þ x) Literature reviewing is central to the argument of all academic texts, contributing to each chapter or section, implicitly or explicitly, and binding them into a coherent whole. Literature reviewing is not, as is sometimes thought, just the writing of one, or possibly two, early chapters of a research proposal, report, monograph or dissertation. Nor is it merely annotating research literature on a chosen topic. The selection alone of literature to review is a sophisticated academic skill: the literature reviewed must be current, comprehensive in its range, and demonstrate awareness of the chronological sweep of relevant fields (Zhu & Cheng, 2008). In general, literature reviewing is held to fulfil three functions: it addresses what is known on the research topic, situates the researcher in relation to that knowledge, and evaluates the appropriate methodology to investigate and report the writer’s own proposed research on the topic. Together, these literature reviewing functions help researchers establish authority to carry out their research. All five books reviewed below, written over a 12year period, acknowledge this complexity in literature reviewing. Hart’s book, Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination, published a decade or more before the other four books (see Table1), has been reprinted 7 times in the original edition, most recently in 2009, suggesting that it has become somewhat of a standard text. Indeed, Hart’s work is cited in three of the other four books, including Feak and Swales (2009). Feak and Swales’s book also stems from 1998, when their influential resource, English in today’s world: A writing guide was first published (the Feak & Swales 2000 edition is still available); that publication was a forerunner to the currently-being-revised, expanded set of volumes, of which Telling a research story (2009), reviewed here, is the second. The five books under review cover some similar ground (see Table) but from different positions. Hart’s book, Doing a literature review, focuses on literature reviewing as argument construction and proceeds through detailed commentary and discussion of published literature reviews in the social sciences. The chapters begin with theoretical framing and the author’s own argument, alluding to examples, which are appended to the chapters, usually two to each chapter. The examples are detailed commentaries on published literature reviews which, understandably, could not be reprinted in his book at length. Nonetheless, not being able to read them is a bit of a drawback for the reader, who has to rely on the commentariesdthat is, reviews of the reviewsdin the chapter appendices and then return to the “middle” of each chapter for its conclusion. Readers may be further distracted by the layout of the examples, which sometimes are set off by a horizontal line in the text before and afterwards, and sometimes not. In addition, text in the examples is neither indented nor in a distinguishing font (e.g., sans serif). The 1 Despite Feak and Swales’s note (p. 19, # 5) in the online commentary on their book (http://www.press.umich.edu/esl/compsite/ETRW/ and accessed 18/6/10) that tables can be hard to construct in the Humanities, a table in a short review such as this seemed sensible.
62
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
Table. Content and focus of the books. Author/ date
Hart, 1998
Ridley, 2008
Machi & McEvoy, 2009
Feak & Swales, 2009
Fink, 2010
Main focus
Social sciences
Inter-disciplinary
Experimental research
Inter-disciplinary
Inter-disciplinary
E-technology
Assumes skills
Teaches skills
Teaches some skills
Assumes skills Is a multi-media resource
Teaches skills
Audiencea
Doctoral students & higher educators
Students and teachers
Instructors
Students & tutors
Graduate students & research agencies
Activities
Author analysis of techniques to understand research literature and construct argument using commentary on published reviews
A practical, stepby-step guide with explanations, chapter opening overviews and final summaries, and chapter tasks
A six-step process with questions to ask oneself, instructions to follow and exercises
Task-oriented, interactive teaching with sample texts and commentary (online)
Author explanation of conducting literature analyses Chapter exercises and answers
Index
U
U
U
X
U
Content focus
Reading research Analysing argument Organizing and expressing ideas Writing the review
Information sources
Topic selection
Planning the writing
Conducting searches
Literature searching
Reading & note-taking strategies Reference management Structuring the review In-text citations Being critical Writer voice
Developing an argument Conducting the literature survey Literature critique Review writing
Structural, expression & positioning considerations Drafting
Designing the search sample Collection & analysis
a
Doing the review Meta Analysis
The audience for whom this reviewer thinks a book would be suitable; this is not necessarily the audience specified by authors.
analyses (which use Toulmin’s and Fisher’s models, 1999 and 2003 respectively), however, are insightful and will interest those research students with some experience of academic writing and knowledge of the disciplines from which the sample texts are drawn. The five appendices to the book provide practical tips and outlines of research proposals, reference citing, thesis presentation, record-keeping, and a reviewing checklist of dos and don’ts. In contrast, Ridley’s book, The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students, is straightforward to follow. The examples from texts (quite a few from students’ work) are accessible and chapter content is clearly sequential and consistently formatted. Most important, the explanations are easy to understand despite the complex role of literature reviewing in the construction of academic texts. Consequently, neither students nor teachers will be overwhelmed by what there is to learn about preparing literature reviews (e.g., Chapter 7 on in-text citations contains particularly practical advice about what many find rather fiddly to do). Also, the range of disciplines covered (e.g., health education, social science, environmental studies) is sufficiently diverse to make the book widely useful. Similar to Ridley’s book, Machi and McEvoy’s book, The literature review: Six steps to success, follows an ordered sequence and has chapter summaries and checklists. Both books work from a core flow-chart, which is reprinted in each chapter with the step featured in a particular chapter highlighted so that readers can see what stage of the total process they’ve reached. But Machi and McEvoy’s book is not as inviting as Ridley’s. For one thing, Machi and McEvoy take a narrow approach to research methodology, favouring experimental studies and quantitative analysis and, for another, instructing readers rather than engaging with them. Literature reviewing is a messier process than the authors allow for and the interpretation of data always depends on the researcher’s orientation to knowledge and meaning-construction (Hyland, 2009, p. 11). More examples and detailed discussion of the studies they refer to would
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
63
add appeal to what Machi and McEvoy are aiming to teach. Also, although the book appears to be designed and marketed as a self-study resource, the material would work much better mediated by a tutor. A strength of Machi and McEvoy’s book is that, like Fink’s book, Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper, it makes crystal clear that literature reviewing is itself research and must therefore meet the same rigorous requirements expected of the research literature which is being reviewed. For example, Chapter 3 in Machi and McEvoy on developing an argument (Step 3) usefully distinguishes between two kinds of argument involved in literature reviews: discovery, explaining and discussing what is known about a topic; and advocacy, analyzing and critiquing the literature review data (p. 61ff). Fink’s book, the most recent of the five, is as firm as Machi and McEvoy’s book on the importance of designing and conducting literature reviews as a piece of valid, reliable research. However, it is less useful for the inexperienced researcher on the writing of literature reviews. It concentrates on the examination of literature and assumes that readers will have some knowledge of how to employ the main statistical tests used to analyze quantitative data. Whereas Machi and McEvoy write for the learning researcher, Fink is also writing for research consultants who, for example, work for agencies commissioned to research what has already been discovered on a topic for research organizations or government bodies. These consultants might or might not be required also to advocate (cf. Machi & McEvoy) specific research studies as outcomes as postgraduate students are. Fink’s book would appear to be the most interdisciplinary of the five books. For example, it is comparatively evenhanded in its targeting of the health sciences, business studies, the social sciences, and the humanities. It is clearly written and organized and balances explanation with exploration through activities and discussion. Chapter rationales and structures are precise and each one contains useful checklists, exercises and answers. The book may do what it sets out to do, namely, teach the conduct and analysis of research literature in stand-alone studies or as part of other academic documents. It would not, however, help me supervise doctoral students in my disciplinary areas, which entail mainly mixed or qualitative research methodologies, as Feak and Swales’s book can. Telling a research story: Writing a literature review is the least judgemental of the five concerning research methodology, and is the better for it. However, Feak and Swales take the most restricted approach to literature reviewing. They have a narrower aim: They set out, as their title indicates, to support the writing of literature reviews in academic research texts. Feak and Swales’s book like the others covers different disciplinary settings (e.g., discourse studies, information management, social studies), but it also draws on extensive knowledge and experience in language study of academic discourse. It focuses on the narrative of research and how language, style, and skilful use of rhetoric can position academic writers and their audience. It sets writing in its academic context; that is, it requires readers to consider how writing functions as part of the discourse that creates, shapes and maintains academic communities. The activities employed are inviting and the authors make the instructional content interesting. Readers are asked, for instance, to respond to statements, complete checklists, categorize examples of academic writing and citations, analyse different stylistic conventions, practise the use of different linking strategies, and so forth, All that said, it is not an easy book to use. Section divisions within sections (as opposed to chapters) confuse the narrative line of the book, and the online commentary is not an entirely good decision for several reasons. Working with a book is different from reading online. How often will readers bother to make the shift from one medium to another and back? The advantages of online commentary are that it encourages interactivity and continuous updating of material. Feak and Swales invite this, and have included Vera Irwin, a doctoral researcher working in the area; her comments, like theirs, are practical and insightful. The commentary as a whole is excellent, simultaneously providing clear direction and raising awareness of language and academic issues. But I can’t help wondering whether readers are being sold short on two fronts: having to deal with the material as multi-media text (an insidious move towards the whole revised resource being published online, perhaps?) and losing what was an effective comprehensive resource. English in today’s research world in its first edition has been used as a core text in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) since its first edition was published in 1998. Maybe a set of slim volumes will sell better, but the whole, integrated product is ultimately the best value in my view, certainly for EAP teachers. Most important of all, the writing of literature reviews cannot be divorced from the searching, reading, analyzing and critiquing that precede and accompany it, as the other four books confirm. Literature reviewing does not, in fact, finish until the academic activity and resulting document it serves are complete. The presentation of Feak and Swales’s book as a discrete volume with its own commentary online suggests that the writing of a literature review can be separated from other literature reviewing activities, whether that is intentional or not. Nonetheless, Feak and Swales’s book is the one that graduate students and specialists in EAP may well refer to most often and feel most
64
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
comfortable using of the five books because it addresses text and language issues and does so in accessible, interesting ways. A strength of all five books is that they acknowledge the useful development of electronic tools in locating and searching research literature (see Table). All integrate explanation and exercises in using web resources and search engines to some extent and all in matter-of-fact ways. Ridley and Fink in their books reproduce what Ridley calls “screenshots” of screen-pages and dialog boxes to help readers work from book to screen. Some of the books (in particular, Machi & McEvoy, and Fink) describe in detail search terms and processes, such as Boolean queries. Feak and Swales, as already noted, employ both online and hard copy texts in their book, though not with the same teaching purpose. I definitely want Feak and Swales’s and Ridley’s books within hand’s reach on my bookshelves, the former because of its linguistic perspective, the latter because I could teach the whole process of literature reviewing from it and recommend it to students to dip into for additional, independent study. The other three books I would recommend for purchase by university libraries as useful additional sources. For those students and academics familiar with the research orientations propounded, they may be key texts as well. Short reviews in journals tend to summarize content and, having scanned the field, slot the materials under review into their disciplinary or pedagogic contexts and identify their most appropriate audiences. The books reviewed here could position a review such as this on shaky ground: I find it slightly uncomfortable to be briefly reviewing them when the books themselves campaign for rigor, range, and depth. With this caveat in mind, I provide in this review a broad-brush picture of the five books and comment on their use in specific situations. Overall, the five books, some more effectively than others, confirm the important, complicated role of literature reviewing in academic activities in orienting the reviewer towards a situated research focus and methodology. References Feak, C. B., & Swales, J. M. (2000). English in today’s research world: A writing guide (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Fisher, A. (2003). The logic of real arguments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse: English in a global context. London: Continuum. Toulmin, S. (1999). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhu, W., & Cheng, R. (2008). Negotiating the dissertation literature review: the influence of personal theories. In C. P. Casanave, & X. Li (Eds.), Learning the literacy practices of graduate school (pp. 134e149). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Jill Burton University of South Australia, Education, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia * Tel.: þ61 883026611. E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2010.07.003
Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success, Wendy L. Belcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (2009), ISBN 978-1-4129-5701-4, (pp. 351), USD$49.95 Academic writing and publishing: A practical handbook, James Hartley. London: Routledge (2008), ISBN 978-0-41545322-6, (pp. 196), USD$37.50 Getting published in international journals, Natalie Reid. Oslo: NOVAdNorwegian Social Research (2010), ISBN 978-82-7894-338-0, (pp. 303), V37 Writing for academic journals, Rowena Murray, (2nd ed.). Berkshire, UK: McGraw Hill/Open University Press (2009), ISBN 978-033523458-5, (pp. 220), £19.99 or USD$45
Book reviews: Literature reviewing Telling a research story: Writing a literature review, Christine B. Feak, John M. SwalesVolume 2 of the revised & expanded edition of English in today’s research world, The Michigan Series in English for Academic and Professional Purposes. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press (2009), ISBN 978-0-472-03336-2, £10.56/U.S.$16.00. (98 pp þ xiv) Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper, Arlene Fink, (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications (2010), ISBN 978-1-4129-7189-8, £32.00/U.S.$53.95, (253 pp þ xviii) Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination, Chris Hart, 8 printings. London: Sage Publications (1998), ISBN 978-0-7619-5975-5, £20.99/U.S.$51.95, (230 pp þ x) The literature review: Six steps to success, Lawrence A. Machi, Brenda T. McEvoy. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, A Sage Company (2009), ISBN 978-1-4129-6135-6, £17.99/$U.S.28.95, (164 pp þ xvi) The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students, Diana Ridley. London: Sage Publications (2008), ISBN 9781-4129-3426-8, £17.99/U.S.$36.95, (170 pp þ x) Literature reviewing is central to the argument of all academic texts, contributing to each chapter or section, implicitly or explicitly, and binding them into a coherent whole. Literature reviewing is not, as is sometimes thought, just the writing of one, or possibly two, early chapters of a research proposal, report, monograph or dissertation. Nor is it merely annotating research literature on a chosen topic. The selection alone of literature to review is a sophisticated academic skill: the literature reviewed must be current, comprehensive in its range, and demonstrate awareness of the chronological sweep of relevant fields (Zhu & Cheng, 2008). In general, literature reviewing is held to fulfil three functions: it addresses what is known on the research topic, situates the researcher in relation to that knowledge, and evaluates the appropriate methodology to investigate and report the writer’s own proposed research on the topic. Together, these literature reviewing functions help researchers establish authority to carry out their research. All five books reviewed below, written over a 12year period, acknowledge this complexity in literature reviewing. Hart’s book, Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination, published a decade or more before the other four books (see Table1), has been reprinted 7 times in the original edition, most recently in 2009, suggesting that it has become somewhat of a standard text. Indeed, Hart’s work is cited in three of the other four books, including Feak and Swales (2009). Feak and Swales’s book also stems from 1998, when their influential resource, English in today’s world: A writing guide was first published (the Feak & Swales 2000 edition is still available); that publication was a forerunner to the currently-being-revised, expanded set of volumes, of which Telling a research story (2009), reviewed here, is the second. The five books under review cover some similar ground (see Table) but from different positions. Hart’s book, Doing a literature review, focuses on literature reviewing as argument construction and proceeds through detailed commentary and discussion of published literature reviews in the social sciences. The chapters begin with theoretical framing and the author’s own argument, alluding to examples, which are appended to the chapters, usually two to each chapter. The examples are detailed commentaries on published literature reviews which, understandably, could not be reprinted in his book at length. Nonetheless, not being able to read them is a bit of a drawback for the reader, who has to rely on the commentariesdthat is, reviews of the reviewsdin the chapter appendices and then return to the “middle” of each chapter for its conclusion. Readers may be further distracted by the layout of the examples, which sometimes are set off by a horizontal line in the text before and afterwards, and sometimes not. In addition, text in the examples is neither indented nor in a distinguishing font (e.g., sans serif). The 1 Despite Feak and Swales’s note (p. 19, # 5) in the online commentary on their book (http://www.press.umich.edu/esl/compsite/ETRW/ and accessed 18/6/10) that tables can be hard to construct in the Humanities, a table in a short review such as this seemed sensible.
62
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
Table. Content and focus of the books. Author/ date
Hart, 1998
Ridley, 2008
Machi & McEvoy, 2009
Feak & Swales, 2009
Fink, 2010
Main focus
Social sciences
Inter-disciplinary
Experimental research
Inter-disciplinary
Inter-disciplinary
E-technology
Assumes skills
Teaches skills
Teaches some skills
Assumes skills Is a multi-media resource
Teaches skills
Audiencea
Doctoral students & higher educators
Students and teachers
Instructors
Students & tutors
Graduate students & research agencies
Activities
Author analysis of techniques to understand research literature and construct argument using commentary on published reviews
A practical, stepby-step guide with explanations, chapter opening overviews and final summaries, and chapter tasks
A six-step process with questions to ask oneself, instructions to follow and exercises
Task-oriented, interactive teaching with sample texts and commentary (online)
Author explanation of conducting literature analyses Chapter exercises and answers
Index
U
U
U
X
U
Content focus
Reading research Analysing argument Organizing and expressing ideas Writing the review
Information sources
Topic selection
Planning the writing
Conducting searches
Literature searching
Reading & note-taking strategies Reference management Structuring the review In-text citations Being critical Writer voice
Developing an argument Conducting the literature survey Literature critique Review writing
Structural, expression & positioning considerations Drafting
Designing the search sample Collection & analysis
a
Doing the review Meta Analysis
The audience for whom this reviewer thinks a book would be suitable; this is not necessarily the audience specified by authors.
analyses (which use Toulmin’s and Fisher’s models, 1999 and 2003 respectively), however, are insightful and will interest those research students with some experience of academic writing and knowledge of the disciplines from which the sample texts are drawn. The five appendices to the book provide practical tips and outlines of research proposals, reference citing, thesis presentation, record-keeping, and a reviewing checklist of dos and don’ts. In contrast, Ridley’s book, The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students, is straightforward to follow. The examples from texts (quite a few from students’ work) are accessible and chapter content is clearly sequential and consistently formatted. Most important, the explanations are easy to understand despite the complex role of literature reviewing in the construction of academic texts. Consequently, neither students nor teachers will be overwhelmed by what there is to learn about preparing literature reviews (e.g., Chapter 7 on in-text citations contains particularly practical advice about what many find rather fiddly to do). Also, the range of disciplines covered (e.g., health education, social science, environmental studies) is sufficiently diverse to make the book widely useful. Similar to Ridley’s book, Machi and McEvoy’s book, The literature review: Six steps to success, follows an ordered sequence and has chapter summaries and checklists. Both books work from a core flow-chart, which is reprinted in each chapter with the step featured in a particular chapter highlighted so that readers can see what stage of the total process they’ve reached. But Machi and McEvoy’s book is not as inviting as Ridley’s. For one thing, Machi and McEvoy take a narrow approach to research methodology, favouring experimental studies and quantitative analysis and, for another, instructing readers rather than engaging with them. Literature reviewing is a messier process than the authors allow for and the interpretation of data always depends on the researcher’s orientation to knowledge and meaning-construction (Hyland, 2009, p. 11). More examples and detailed discussion of the studies they refer to would
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
63
add appeal to what Machi and McEvoy are aiming to teach. Also, although the book appears to be designed and marketed as a self-study resource, the material would work much better mediated by a tutor. A strength of Machi and McEvoy’s book is that, like Fink’s book, Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper, it makes crystal clear that literature reviewing is itself research and must therefore meet the same rigorous requirements expected of the research literature which is being reviewed. For example, Chapter 3 in Machi and McEvoy on developing an argument (Step 3) usefully distinguishes between two kinds of argument involved in literature reviews: discovery, explaining and discussing what is known about a topic; and advocacy, analyzing and critiquing the literature review data (p. 61ff). Fink’s book, the most recent of the five, is as firm as Machi and McEvoy’s book on the importance of designing and conducting literature reviews as a piece of valid, reliable research. However, it is less useful for the inexperienced researcher on the writing of literature reviews. It concentrates on the examination of literature and assumes that readers will have some knowledge of how to employ the main statistical tests used to analyze quantitative data. Whereas Machi and McEvoy write for the learning researcher, Fink is also writing for research consultants who, for example, work for agencies commissioned to research what has already been discovered on a topic for research organizations or government bodies. These consultants might or might not be required also to advocate (cf. Machi & McEvoy) specific research studies as outcomes as postgraduate students are. Fink’s book would appear to be the most interdisciplinary of the five books. For example, it is comparatively evenhanded in its targeting of the health sciences, business studies, the social sciences, and the humanities. It is clearly written and organized and balances explanation with exploration through activities and discussion. Chapter rationales and structures are precise and each one contains useful checklists, exercises and answers. The book may do what it sets out to do, namely, teach the conduct and analysis of research literature in stand-alone studies or as part of other academic documents. It would not, however, help me supervise doctoral students in my disciplinary areas, which entail mainly mixed or qualitative research methodologies, as Feak and Swales’s book can. Telling a research story: Writing a literature review is the least judgemental of the five concerning research methodology, and is the better for it. However, Feak and Swales take the most restricted approach to literature reviewing. They have a narrower aim: They set out, as their title indicates, to support the writing of literature reviews in academic research texts. Feak and Swales’s book like the others covers different disciplinary settings (e.g., discourse studies, information management, social studies), but it also draws on extensive knowledge and experience in language study of academic discourse. It focuses on the narrative of research and how language, style, and skilful use of rhetoric can position academic writers and their audience. It sets writing in its academic context; that is, it requires readers to consider how writing functions as part of the discourse that creates, shapes and maintains academic communities. The activities employed are inviting and the authors make the instructional content interesting. Readers are asked, for instance, to respond to statements, complete checklists, categorize examples of academic writing and citations, analyse different stylistic conventions, practise the use of different linking strategies, and so forth, All that said, it is not an easy book to use. Section divisions within sections (as opposed to chapters) confuse the narrative line of the book, and the online commentary is not an entirely good decision for several reasons. Working with a book is different from reading online. How often will readers bother to make the shift from one medium to another and back? The advantages of online commentary are that it encourages interactivity and continuous updating of material. Feak and Swales invite this, and have included Vera Irwin, a doctoral researcher working in the area; her comments, like theirs, are practical and insightful. The commentary as a whole is excellent, simultaneously providing clear direction and raising awareness of language and academic issues. But I can’t help wondering whether readers are being sold short on two fronts: having to deal with the material as multi-media text (an insidious move towards the whole revised resource being published online, perhaps?) and losing what was an effective comprehensive resource. English in today’s research world in its first edition has been used as a core text in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) since its first edition was published in 1998. Maybe a set of slim volumes will sell better, but the whole, integrated product is ultimately the best value in my view, certainly for EAP teachers. Most important of all, the writing of literature reviews cannot be divorced from the searching, reading, analyzing and critiquing that precede and accompany it, as the other four books confirm. Literature reviewing does not, in fact, finish until the academic activity and resulting document it serves are complete. The presentation of Feak and Swales’s book as a discrete volume with its own commentary online suggests that the writing of a literature review can be separated from other literature reviewing activities, whether that is intentional or not. Nonetheless, Feak and Swales’s book is the one that graduate students and specialists in EAP may well refer to most often and feel most
64
Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69
comfortable using of the five books because it addresses text and language issues and does so in accessible, interesting ways. A strength of all five books is that they acknowledge the useful development of electronic tools in locating and searching research literature (see Table). All integrate explanation and exercises in using web resources and search engines to some extent and all in matter-of-fact ways. Ridley and Fink in their books reproduce what Ridley calls “screenshots” of screen-pages and dialog boxes to help readers work from book to screen. Some of the books (in particular, Machi & McEvoy, and Fink) describe in detail search terms and processes, such as Boolean queries. Feak and Swales, as already noted, employ both online and hard copy texts in their book, though not with the same teaching purpose. I definitely want Feak and Swales’s and Ridley’s books within hand’s reach on my bookshelves, the former because of its linguistic perspective, the latter because I could teach the whole process of literature reviewing from it and recommend it to students to dip into for additional, independent study. The other three books I would recommend for purchase by university libraries as useful additional sources. For those students and academics familiar with the research orientations propounded, they may be key texts as well. Short reviews in journals tend to summarize content and, having scanned the field, slot the materials under review into their disciplinary or pedagogic contexts and identify their most appropriate audiences. The books reviewed here could position a review such as this on shaky ground: I find it slightly uncomfortable to be briefly reviewing them when the books themselves campaign for rigor, range, and depth. With this caveat in mind, I provide in this review a broad-brush picture of the five books and comment on their use in specific situations. Overall, the five books, some more effectively than others, confirm the important, complicated role of literature reviewing in academic activities in orienting the reviewer towards a situated research focus and methodology. References Feak, C. B., & Swales, J. M. (2000). English in today’s research world: A writing guide (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Fisher, A. (2003). The logic of real arguments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse: English in a global context. London: Continuum. Toulmin, S. (1999). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhu, W., & Cheng, R. (2008). Negotiating the dissertation literature review: the influence of personal theories. In C. P. Casanave, & X. Li (Eds.), Learning the literacy practices of graduate school (pp. 134e149). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Jill Burton University of South Australia, Education, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia * Tel.: þ61 883026611. E-mail address: [email protected] doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2010.07.003
Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success, Wendy L. Belcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (2009), ISBN 978-1-4129-5701-4, (pp. 351), USD$49.95 Academic writing and publishing: A practical handbook, James Hartley. London: Routledge (2008), ISBN 978-0-41545322-6, (pp. 196), USD$37.50 Getting published in international journals, Natalie Reid. Oslo: NOVAdNorwegian Social Research (2010), ISBN 978-82-7894-338-0, (pp. 303), V37 Writing for academic journals, Rowena Murray, (2nd ed.). Berkshire, UK: McGraw Hill/Open University Press (2009), ISBN 978-033523458-5, (pp. 220), £19.99 or USD$45