Writing a Literature Review Using the CARS Model

Assigned Readings

Elizabeth Wardle & Doug Downs, “Creating a Research Space (CARS)," Writing About Writing p. 61-62

Now that you have collected and started to analyze your sources, you should start on the first part of the Research Proposal assignment: The Literature Review.

In the Annotated Bibliography assignment, the directions for the literature review are:

"Begin your proposal with a carefully crafted literature review (typically 2-3 double-spaced pages) that announces your scholarly conversation and explains the current conversation happening between your secondary sources. Using your sources during this unit and annotated below, you will need to synthesize all six of your secondary sources to show what past scholars have studied and argued. "

Ultimately, the Literature Review is where you tell your reader about the important conversations going on around your line of inquiry. Hopefully, you have been building up to this by making connections between your sources in the second paragraph of your annotations.

The CARS Model

To help us understand the genre conventions of the introduction to a research paper, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs introduce us to John Swales' CARS Model - an acronym for "Creating a Research Space." Depending on which articles you picked in choosing your line of inquiry, you may have seen Swales cited a lot and you may already have a good idea of what a "moves" analysis looks like (see AlAfnan-WorkplaceGenres.pdf if you want to check it out!).

Let's look at the CARS model in more detail here.

Move 1: Establishing a Territory

Swales writes that “In this move, the author sets the context for his or her research, providing necessary background on the topic” (62).

It includes these three steps:

A. Claiming centrality

Swales says that this is where “The author asks the discourse community (the audience for the paper) to accept that the research about the be reported is a lively, significant, or well-established research area” (62). This is basically setting up your research and telling your reader that you are entering into an existing conversation and then telling them why they should care.

B. Making generalizations

You have been developing an understanding of your conversations with your annotations, so now that you have an idea about what is being said, you will start making statements about what is generally done or already known in the field.

C. Reviewing Previous Items of Research

To support your point about the general claims and work already being done in the field, you will cite the research of others to the topic at hand. So, this is where that Intertextuality and Textual Support (Quotes, Paraphrases, Summaries) comes in. You have been working on this with your annotations already, especially if you have been telling me about the conversations between sources in that second paragraph.

Move 2: Establishing a Niche

Swales writes that “In this move, the author argues that there is an open 'niche' in the existing research, a space that need to be filled through additional research.” (62).

Think of a niche like a "gap" in the conversation, or the opportunity for you to join the parlor/party referenced by Wardle & Downs; you are saying "X, Y, and Z sources all talked about this thing in this way. Now I am entering into the conversation in this other way."

You can establish a niche in several ways.

A. Counter-claiming

You can refute or challenge earlier research. So you can say, "While earlier research says [whatever you just outlined in move 1], I would like to challenge that research because..."

B. Indicating a gap

Author can say that earlier research does not address all issues or questions on a topic. So, you might say something like "While earlier research has explored this thing in this particular context[whatever you just outlined in move 1], they have not explored it in this other context."

C. Question-raising

In this case, you will ask questions about earlier research and suggests that there are more avenues to explore with research. So you might point to a specific author from Move 1 and say "This person’s research raise questions about…[whatever you think they raise questions about]")

D. Continuing a tradition

In this case, you would say that what they are doing is usefully adding to existing research. This can be about verifying existing research to see if it is still true or to see if it has changed in anyway. You might point to some specific feature or conversation that you outlined in Move 1 and say "Previous research has shown that. [whatever you just outlined in move 1], and I would like to verify and add to their research by...")

Move 3: Occupying the Niche

Once you have established the niche or the gap in your previous research, then you occupy it with your research! This is where you will get to contribute to that ongoing conversation now that you have "listened" to those ongoing conversations in Moves 1 and 2.

Swales write, "In this move, the author turns the niche established in Move 2 into the research space that he or she will fill; that is, the author demonstrates how [they] will substantiate the counterclaim made, fill the gap identified, answer the question(s) asked, or continue the research tradition” (62).

You do this in several ways. First, you can do one of two things.

A. State stating their main purpose directly.

If you go this route, you will simply state what you hope to do with your research for the rest of the semester.

B. Announcing the present research

If you go this route, you will simply state what your research will do this semester.

These next moves will be harder for you at this stage of the process since you have not completed your data analysis yet, but you can go ahead and try.

C. State principle findings

This is where you make your claim or thesis statement. You might not know this yet, ultimately, this is where you tell your reader what you found from your research.

D. Outline the structure of the paper

This is where you tell the reader about what you will do in the rest of the paper. This part serves like a map or guide for your reader so that they know where you are going. Importantly, this is a genre convention that is particular to Western academic writing, so be aware that this is a cultural convention that not everyone follows. (Some cultures prefer to keep their findings from the research for the end, for instance). If you are choosing to follow the IMRAD format, this might be as simple as "In this paper, I will first outline my methods. Then I will outline me findings [tell your reader your findings], then I will discuss the implications of my research in the discussion section of the paper."