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Literature Review and Background Essay Guidelines 

Intro:

Hook: The first line of your intro should draw your readers in.
 You should develop the intro sharing information related to your main argument, but do not go into anything in depth.
You must tell your readers that the writing is a background and literature review writing
 Thesis statement: clearly establishes the stance for your research paper, which is your main argument.
 

Background Information 

For your body paragraph(s), you should discuss background information your readers should know about your subject. For instance, if there are acronyms you are using, you can tell readers what they stand for. If you are talking about something that not many people are familiar with, you can define it. For example, if you discuss green diesel, you can tell readers what it is. You can also provide historical information, information on key figures connected to your topic, etc.

These paragraphs should be informative, and not persuasive at all.

Topic sentence: introduces the focus points or types of information you will be sharing information about in the body paragraph Paraphrase material about the focus for your paragraph that gives more insight on your essay’s topic. Since this background information is fact based, your paragraph will be paraphrased or summarized information. Do not forget to provide citations for all the material you use in these types of paragraphs. Use quotes to validate the information. You should also have a concluding sentence at the end of these paragraphs, and if you transition into an additional background paragraph, make sure you link the two paragraphs with keywords. For example, “In addition to information on historical figures related to green diesel, we must also explore information on the uses for green diesel.” This is telling readers that the previous paragraph is on information about historical figures, and the next paragraph is about the uses for green diesel.

Literature Review

Your literature review paragraphs should go over a few of your sources(I would recommend highlighting the strongest sources in your literature review)

You can do two things in your literature review:

Break ups your paragraphs by topic that the sources support(so group all sources that support the cost benefits of using green diesel together, and then you’d have another paragraph that contains a few of the sources that support the environmental benefits of using green diesel, etc) 

OR

Focus on one source per paragraph

1.You should have a topic sentence that tells readers the title and author of the source you will be summarizing or the sub argument that the sources in the paragraph will support.

2. You MUST have quotes.

3. You must connect your source and sub argument to the main argument clearly(this establishes the relevance of discussing this source or these sources as they relate to your main argument)

4. You must have a summary of the arguments in the source that supports your main argument.

5. You should have a concluding sentence that reviews what you have discussed.

6. You should have a transition sentence or transition word or phase that leads into the next paragraph.

Conclusion:

Summarize

Synthesize

Restate thesis in a conclusive way

Final thoughts or thoughts to consider for the future