Abstract

College students in Saudi Arabia engaged in various English activities in digital spaces during the COVID-19 crisis, despite it being their second language. Drawing on the concept of digital literacies proposed by Jones and Hafner (2012), this paper identifies the digital literacy practices that occurred in the English language during COVID-19 crisis. Focus group interviews and individual interviews were conducted via WhatsApp with ten college students who had recently attended an intensive English course at a university in Saudi Arabia. Thematic analysis, assisted by ATLAS.ti, revealed that the college students engaged in complex digital literacy practices in English during the COVID-19 crisis to improve their competency in English, educating the community and oneself about COVID-19 as well as to cope with the boredom of remaining indoors. College students mainly used smartphone apps in their literacies, and their usage was guided by their feelings, commitment and the contextual events around them. The literacies these students drew on reflected their metacognitive awareness of the value of English to their everyday life experience. This paper concludes by encouraging college students to exploit the potential of smartphone apps to improve their capacity in English and incorporate apps into their everyday lives.

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