The preliminary literature review is simply a one (preferable) or two-page (at most) document that contains the following:
Title (2 point) – Title must be concise and relevant to the table of content and section titles
Abstract (6 points) – If you never wrote an abstract, you need to learn how to write it. Abstract must be less then 500 words and serve as an executive summary of the paper. Use APA citation format.
Outline (6 points) – Outline for the final paper (potential table of contents, section titles). Think about the section titles after reviewing the sources. Do not include any explanations under the titles, just the titles are required.
Bibliography (6 points) – This must have a minimum of four journal and/or textbook references. These must be real journals, which you can find in online sources such as the ASU Online Library, but cannot be only online web sites like blogs. In addition, you can use one or two, maximum of two, web sources such as Wikipedia if it helps you with a definition; however, the majority of your paper must be based on real journal and/or textbook references. My recommendation is you uses the ASU Online Library search rather than Google. You will spend hours searching through Google looking for real journal articles; however, in the ASU Online Library (you will find it in your MyASU), you can quickly narrow your search to books and journals only, and it is free.
The following links might be helpful if you are not familiar with writing a literature review:
Getting Started on a Literature ReviewLinks to an external site.