Objectives

On completion of this activity, you will be able to:

• define key concepts pertaining to search literacy
• explain how search engines work and how to find information and materials in the target language
• select resources for the classroom and design search literacy tasks for your students

Introduction

Language students rely on the Internet to search and retrieve information and materials in their target language in order to complete assignments. However, many of them, especially in their first year in college, report difficulties in sourcing relevant materials in the target language. Some will rely exclusively on materials in their first language, which they may try to translate, and will therefore miss the opportunity to be exposed to varied viewpoints from the culture they are trying to understand and to the language they are trying to learn. Their research strategies may also be somewhat haphazard as they may not fully understand how search engines work, how to use their functionalities while being aware of their limitations. They may also have difficulties in choosing appropriate search terms that will yield interesting results, and in interpreting the latter.

While there are many resources out there to help teachers and students enhance their information and search literacies (see for example the excellent booklet Integrating Information Literacy into the Curriculum, produced by the Consortium of National and University Libraries), they tend to be generic and normally assume that searches will be conducted through English. However, knowing how to help students to develop ‘good’ search strategies in the target language is becoming increasingly important in any language course. Integrating search literacy in the language curriculum can also be beneficial to students as it can help language learners to increase their L2 vocabulary, improve their spelling, as well as being exposed to a wide range of authentic materials and cultural perspectives. To find resources and materials on this topic in your language, consult the language specific content at the bottom of this page.

 

Project Information Literacy: Search = Frustration; Information School, University of Washington

So, what is search literacy?

Search literacy primarily focuses on information. Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2013: 20) define search literacy as the “ability to make effective use of a wide array of search engines, including a familiarity with their full functionality as well as their limitations”.

Some useful links

• Your institution library will have put together very useful resources to help students develop their search skills. Some of them are open to anybody. For example:
  • DCU library: LETSfind
  • UL library: Using the Library
  • NUIG library: Using the library
  • MIC library: Using the library
  • LIT library: Library service
  • DIT library: Discover the library
• The All Aboard metro map will point you to various documents on the topic of search and information literacy. What is a search engine and how does it work?

You may wonder why, as language teachers, we should know the basics about search engines. Well, they are many reasons for this, but two of them are particularly compelling. Firstly, we use search engines on a daily basis to find materials for our language classes, and it is always a good idea to have some basic idea of how the tools we use (or the car we drive) work. Secondly, many of us maintain (or will maintain) a website or a class blog. Web administrators/owners need to decide whether they want their site to be indexed and found by web crawlers. In some cases, you may want to prevent search engines to find your class in order to minimise security risks (not all web crawlers are friendly…) or protect the privacy of your students.

 

How does a Search Engine work, Anurag Dwivedi

 

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, a search engine is a computer program that is used to “search data (as text or a database) for specified information”. It is also “a site on the World Wide Web that uses such software to locate key words in other sites”. Most of us probably use Google on a daily basis, but how does it work? When you enter your search query in Google or any other search engine, the search will be done in three basic stages:

1. Crawling. A web crawler is a program which scans the World Wide Web at an incredible speed to find the content you are looking for.
2. Indexing. The data that has been collected during the crawling stage is now organised and placed in a database.
3. Retrieval. The previous stages occur in the background, often so fast that you are not aware of them. The retrieval stage is what you see after entering a search query: the search engine displays the results (or hits) that match your query. It also ranks them, often using a mysterious and well guarded algorithm. And we tend to click on the links that appear at the top of the result pages…

If you want to know more about this topic, here are a few links that you may find interesting. You will also find more materials in the language specific sections at the bottom of this page.

• How do search engines work? Simple and basic explanations by MakeUseOf Explains.
• How Internet Search Engines Work. More detailed and slightly more technical explanations by Tech section of the HowStuffWorks site.
• All Aboard: Search engines

What search engine should I use?

Although Google is the most popular search engine, there are many others that can yield results of interest to you. You will find a list of search engines that you may want to try out on Mark Pegrum’s E-language search page. If you use Google, think of using the version corresponding to your target language.

Search literacy in the language classroom

Although teachers and students alike may think that they can use search engines effectively, this is not always the case. Few of them think of using a language specific version of Google (e.g., Google France, Google Deutschland, etc.), nor do they think of using Google’s advanced search features, which allow them to narrow their search by language or region, as well as to specify search words or phrases.

 

 

Language students will also need some help in choosing appropriate search terms or keywords and in selecting which hits to further explore.

 

 

They may also need some help with Boolean operators, which can help you refine or expand their search.

 

 

The table below lists the activities that you can use in your classroom or that students can attempt on this site.

Context of use	Title	Related themes	Languages
Activities for the classroom
	Let's search!		FR
Independent learning
	Search literacy... what is it?	Hypertext literacy; Vocabulary	FR
	Let's explore some search engines	Search literacy (student)

Related topics

• Information literacy
• Filter literacy
• Tagging literacy

 

 

Source/attribution: DigiLanguages     Author:   Françoise Blin