The Director of Institute of the Malay World and Civilization (ATMA) of University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Prof Dr Supyan Hussin was invited to give a talk titled “Good and Bad Literature Reviews”. This talk was held on 19 August 2019 at UTAR Sungai Long Campus. It was jointly organised by the Centre for Modern Languages and Literature (CMLL), and Faculty of Creative Industries’ Department of Modern Languages (DML).
Dr Supyan began the talk by elucidating the reasons for writing a literature review. Next, he explained the key points of a literature review. The four elements of a good literature review include using correct structure, format, content and language. He also provided the sources of reference and shared about his previous researches that were undertaken in the recent five years. Dr Supyan also taught participants the effective ways of writing a critical literature review using a flow chart. “Literature review is not a summary of the past studies, but an assessment and critical review of the past studies,” he said. He then pointed out 11 things bear in mind when writing a literature review. It included extracting main points or key issues from the textbook/article, summarising the main points, examining the theoretical framework used in the studies, looking for instruments used, taking note of how the data was collected and analysed, finding suitable quotes to be used the literature review, tracking all bibliographic information, using quotation marks and citing the page number (when you copied the author’s words directly), stating the purpose of the author’s statement, stating the conclusions that the author made and finding points to supports the conclusion. He also gave four useful links to obtain good literature review tips to the participants.
The talk continued with Dr Supyan explaining the differences between theoretical and conceptual frameworks. He then presented an example of a critical literature review in English and Malay as references. He advised the participants to avoid starting a paragraph with a quote as it is best to start with one’s own voice or ideas. “Always start with your own voice and a topic sentence to support your points,” Dr Supyan said. He also cautioned the participants to not overcite every sentence as it shows the absence of one’s own voice. “A good, critical literature review is the key to successful research,” he said.
Dr Supyan giving a talk
Dr Supyan concluding his talk
CMLL Chairperson Dr Nadya Supian presenting a token of appreciation to Dr Supyan (most left) as DML Head Maxwell Sim Yik Seng (most right) looks on
Second row, seventh from left: Dr Nadya, Dr Supyan and Maxwell Sim with participants
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