Individual differences in online reference resource consultation: Case studies of Korean ESL graduate writers

•Two advanced L2 writers consulted different reference resources effectively to support their L2 writing.•But they showed wide differences in their uses of reference resources during composition.•Various factors interacted to affect the participants’ reference resource consultation.•The findings suggest progressive and personalized learner training.

With increasing availability of new types of reference tools such as corpora and search engines, today’s L2 writers have a wider choice than ever in the online reference resources. To examine how L2 writers would navigate this growing variety of reference resources and exploit them to support the lexico-grammatical aspects of their own academic writing, the present study carried out case studies of two ESL graduate writers consulting eight different online reference resources including corpus tools, Google, and online dictionaries while completing an authentic writing assignment. The study particularly set out to examine individual differences in the use of the resources and contributing factors thereof.Results revealed that the participants perceived and acted upon different affordances from the reference resources, showing wide differences in many aspects including the extent of use, problem types, query purposes, resources consulted, and their attitudes toward using such resources as writing assistance. The cross-case analysis indicated that these differences were largely caused by complex interactions of factors related to writer, text, and context. The findings suggest the effective use of online reference resources requires learner training that is contingent on individual learners’ ongoing needs arising from their specific writing contexts.