Understanding EFL writers’ academic transition in relation to information literacy: A qualitative inquiry

Abstract

This qualitative study explores academically transitioning student writers’ practice of information literacy for scholarly activities. The study harnessed a qualitative analysis of three rounds of interviews collected over a semester-long interaction with six English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writers transitioning to an academic research course at a university in China. It shows that during this process, the gap between the EFL students’ knowledge repertoires and what they were expected to grasp hampered them in navigating the information literacy needed to complete their assignments. Their academic transition was also interrupted by additional factors arising from the process, with the students projecting their academic identity by refraining from navigating information literacy or seeking shortcuts to practice information literacy. However, the EFL writers responded to this temporarily failed transition, both drawing on their internal resources and with external assistance. They projected their new academic identity by improving their skills in navigating information literacy, although the EFL writers, still troubled by threshold concepts, did not achieve a perfect transition, and their transition was accompanied by individual differences in information navigation. The study concludes that the EFL writers’ academic transition to the practice of information literacy was a challenging, complex, and dynamic process, especially as applied to a course on academic research.