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Assessing and Applying litterature

Introduction

Introduction to this site

Assessing and applying litterature

Litterature

Assessing litterature

As an academic student, you need to develop critical and independent skills to assess literature and figure out how you can use it as a part of your argumentation.

In an academic context, you are not supposed to pretend you invented everything. You should rather show your ability to build upon existing theories, methods or texts, and show that you are capable of selecting and applying relevant theories to your work.

The following questions can be used when selecting the right literature:

  • Who is the author? Is the author credible?
  • Is the argumentation solid? And is the source material objective?
  • How old is the text? And how does it relate to other texts within your field?
  • Why do you want to use this text? How can you use it?
  • Where is the text published?
  • What literature is the text referencing?
  • Why can the text be trusted? Is it built on sufficient data?
  • Why is this text better than other similar texts?

Applying litterature

Texts can be used in different ways in your paper, depending on what purpose you want it to fulfill.

You can distinguish between the texts you use as inspiration or basis for further literary search, and the texts you actively use in your paper.

Often, it is important that you do not only reproduce the argumentation from your text, but also use them to build and make your own argumentation and produce some form of new knowledge.

For instance, texts in a paper can be used:

  • As a primary source for analysing, criticising or evaluating
  • As a way to introduce your own work and as a basis for explaining your work
  • To support and justify your claims and argumentations
  • To define your methodological or theoretical approach