Digital Literacy Practices in EFL Graduate Students’ Academic Writing for Scholarly Publication: The Unexpected Role of AI

The exploration of digital literacy in ELT has taken some domains including perceptions, beliefs, practices, frameworks, and challenges of its implementation experienced by secondary school students and teachers. However, studies discovering digital literacy practices of EFL university students, particularly in a specific context, namely scholarly publication are still scarcely conducted. Thus, this qualitative case study aims at exploring digital literacy practices of EFL graduate students when engaging with academic writing for scholarly publication in an Indonesian public university. A total number of 58 EFL graduate university students (i.e., master and doctoral students) participated in filling out online questionnaire where 6 of them were selected purposively based on pre-determined criteria to join interview sessions. Thematical analysis was employed to analyze the data. The main findings of this study revealed five emerging themes reflecting the participants’ digital literacy practices encompassed 1) digital literacy in resource access and management, 2) critical analysis and evaluation of academic content, 3) collaboration and communication practices, 4) creativity and innovation in academic writing, and 5) responsible digital citizenship. One of the most notable findings of this study was the critical evaluation on AI generated contents done by some of the participants during the process of writing manuscripts. Pedagogically, this study implies that digital literacy practices should be intensively promoted in higher education contexts, particularly in the academic writing instruction, emphasizing not only technical skills but also critical engagement when using digital tools and ethical considerations in content creation and scholarly communication.