Introduction
As a university student from China, I often need to find both Chinese and English information for my classes. When I first came to Japan, I usually just use Google or Baidu because it was easy. But later, I found that not all information online is true or useful for academic writing. Sometimes I even cannot understand some English studying sources clearly, especially when use academic vocabularies or long sentences. Therefore, I think information literacy (IL) is very important for us. Information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas [1]. Understanding network knowledge enables people to comprehend the distribution and characteristics of global network information resources and to use various information retrieval tools to obtain the information they need from the Internet, solve problems encountered in daily life, and make effective use of information [2]. When I write essays or do some projects, IL helps me use and understand better English sources. It also helps me to express my own ideas in English.
Information Literacy and Academic Study
When I was a first-year university student, I remember that I used Wikipedia a lot because it was easy to read and find information. But my teacher told me it may be not a good academic source. At that time, I didn’t know how to find journal articles or how to check if the author is reliable. Later, I attended a library workshop about IL. It was a bit difficult to follow because the librarian spoke fast, but I learned to use databases like JSTOR and EBSCO.
After that, I started to find better sources and use citations properly. Sometimes I still make small mistakes, like forget to write the page numbers or use the wrong verb tense when summarizing. But I can see my essays become more logical and strong. Limberg and Sundin (2006) found that students who learn IL use sources more effectively [3]. It can help us search for information and learn knowledge more effectively.
Help Students Build IL Skills
The recent requirement for language teaching in higher education is to develop students’ language technology cultural competence to become competent contributors to their workplace cultures, and to prepare language learners for a digitally and culturally complex workplace environment [4]. Universities should give more support for international students to learn IL. For example, some library workshops were only in English, so it was difficult for me to understand something. I think if they can add Chinese or bilingual examples, it will be more helpful. Also, I use online tools like Zotero to help manage references. Sometimes I forget how to use citation style correctly (for example, where to put the comma), but the tool helps me a lot.
Students who used online IL tools can better judge information quality [5]. I agree with that. In one of my classes, my teacher asked us to compare English and Chinese sources about the same topic. I found that English papers usually give more data and references, and Chinese articles sometimes focus more on opinions or stories. This makes me think about how language and culture change the way we think when writing and the way we understand knowledge.
Conclusion
For us, studying language can help us to understand knowledge and make clearly writing. So information literary not only to research on the internet, but also when we face a lot of information how to find the correct information and think Independently. Sometimes I still make errors which is Grammatical error or using incorrect prepositions but information literary gives me confidence, letting me find myself voice in writing. So it is very important for us to learn how to obtain information and develop the search ability in university. When it can use efficiently, we can learn more knowledge and how to get more effective information.
References
[1] Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Board, Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Chicago, IL: ACRL, 2016.
[2]P. Xia, “A brief discussion on information literacy education for college students,” Library Science Research, no. 6, pp. 79–82, 2000. (in Chinese)
[3] L. Limberg and O. Sundin, “Teaching information seeking: Relating information literacy education to theories of information behaviour,” Information Research, vol. 12, no. 1, 2006.
[4] D. Dressen-Hammouda and C. Wigham, “Evaluating multimodal literacy: Academic and professional interactions around student-produced instructional video tutorials,” System, vol. 105, pp. 1–16, 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.system.2022.102727.
[5] M. Pinto, R. Cordón, and A. Gómez-Díaz, “Thirty years of information literacy (1977–2007): A terminological, conceptual and statistical analysis,” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 3–19, 2010.
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