This article presents a consideration of how students' existing information-seeking behaviors affect traditional methods of teaching library research in first-year writing courses and offers an alternative method that uses both library and popular Internet search tools. It addresses one aspect of the ongoing pedagogical struggle with new information technology. It explores the disconnect between the obligation educators place on students to begin using sophisticated digital library tools for their classes and their ability and willingness to successfully use these tools to find the information that will serve them best. The article presents the results of a small HCI (human-computer interaction) study of first-year writing students and offers a possible explanation for the perceived intractability of these students in their un-academic information-seeking behaviors. Focusing on students' familiarity with popular Internet information tools like the Google search engine, it offers a stage-process approach to information literacy and a method for integrating information-seeking instruction with assignments in first-year writing courses. It discusses how this approach can improve traditional information literacy instruction in the writing classroom before concluding with a discussion of the author's own implementation of the approach in research-based first-year composition courses. (Contains 4 notes.)