An investigation into how L2 international postgraduate students select reading sources


Research question 2 asks whether student source selection changes over time and the stimuli for these changes. Student A’s choice of sources does change, though slightly, over the period of this project. In the post e-diary interview, Student A expressed not having the skill to consider a source as relevant or not, ‘because it was my first experience in doing assessments … I just rely on it … it is not easy to find information on the Blackboard [library search engine] … because there are several sources … but after I found my way. I thought there were better sources to use [than tutor-provided material]’. Student A felt more confident to search for alternative information having been shown where to search, it also suggests his search for sources was active. By the end of May, and in the final interview Student A reported that ‘during this month I have understood the way to develop an assignment and so experience has made the difference … Tutors helped me and said to me read the assignment, the title. I asked the help and also improved it by myself. It was a mix of all these.’ In the post e-diary interview at the end of June, Student A stated he felt more confident in locating sources for his academic assessments. Indeed, he adopted an increasingly independent and sophisticated approach from one month to the next. His reasons aligns with Zhang et al. (2005) and Rowlands and Nicholas (2008) who found that the more subject knowledge a student obtains, the greater their expertise in their domain and a corresponding shift from being a novice source locator to an expert. Student A also stated that peer support was part of the reason for his growing awareness and confidence for knowing where to search for material to support his assessments. This finding appears to support those of Thomas


et al.’s (2017) research which associated peer support with insider knowledge and subject expertise.


FINDINGS FOR STUDENT B


From the initial interview before the e-diary, Student B stated that locating relevant sources was ‘hard work for me, but it was learning experience.’ Her e-diary entries indicated the most frequent types of sources selected were websites, journal articles, books, and reports. Notably, Wikipedia was not mentioned after the first month. In April, Student B specified that she looked for sources which provided background information and corresponded to her own views. However, in May, this was not the case; sources deemed reliable and academic were chosen instead.


Over the period of this research, her comments indicated that sources which were both reliable and relevant to her assignment were the most common reasons for her selection. Other critical themes she cited were: academic, authoritative, up-to-date and interesting. Additionally, the information the sources provided shifted from those purely supporting her own views to a wider range of opinions which generated background information for the assignment. She reported that ‘I choose sources because they are relevant, up-to-date and academic … and not just support my ideas.’ With regard to research question 2,


Student B’s source selection, as for Student A, does change from initially seeming quite erratic to generally being more focused in later months. Interestingly, Student B opted not to use Wikipedia after the initial month of the project. From her e-diary records, Wikipedia was used for background


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