Digital literacy in English has been one of the major employability skills in the digital world, which challenges the graduate employability in Sri Lanka. Unlike the developed world, incorporation of digital literacy into formal English language education in Sri Lanka is yet to be introduced. Although technological mediation is in use to teach the language, the concept of digital literacy in English is not yet academically recognized by the higher education (HE) in Sri Lanka. The life of the Sri Lankan youth got revolutionized by the cutting-edge digital technologies. However, the link between their everyday day digital literacy practices and the English language is hardly addressed in the English language curriculum of the HIED. As a result, although the digital has a high potential to excel the career prospects, global exposure and connectivity of the graduates, lack of digital literacy skills in English becomes a major barrier. Therefore, this study explores  the nature of the everyday digital literacy practices in English of the undergraduates and how this knowledge can be incorporated into the English language curriculum in the HE in Sri Lanka.

The research questions of this study are:

1. What are the everyday digital literacy practices of Sri Lankan undergraduates?

2. What are the purposes behind their engagement in everyday digital literacy practices?

3. What languages do they use to engage in everyday digital literacy practices?

4. Which everyday digital literacy practices provide opportunities to enhance the English    language learning of the Sri Lankan undergraduates?

The theoretical framework supports this study is sociocultural perspective on digital literacies. Digital literacies are “the practices of communicating, relating, thinking and being associated with digital media” (Jones & Hafner, 2012, p. 13). Therefore, from literacy studies perspective, these digital literacy practices are socially and culturally situated while uniquely engaging with technology in the everyday context (Tour, 2017). This framework is important to explore the multiple affordances and constraint of the digital literacies in the everyday context and its implication for English language learning in formal settings. To support this theoretical framework the following theoretical constructs are used. Everyday digital literacy practices are considered as culturally and socially shaped ways of using, producing, and understanding the information in multiple formats from a range of sources when it is presented via the electronic screens of digital technologies (Snyder, 2009). Therefore, understanding everyday digital literacy practices of the undergraduates provides valuable insights regarding their intentions for engagement, their exploitation of language and other uses of multimodal resources. Mediation is another central theoretical construct within the sociocultural approach towards literacy, and in this digital context, it helps to explore the opportunities provided by digital tools to appropriate language and make meanings digitally (Jones & Hafner, 2012; Bulfin & Macgrow,2015). The concept of translanguaging is used to identify how do youth make use of meanings and multiple identities in the multilingual, hybrid  digital contexts (Vogel and Garcia,2017).  The construct of World Englishes is also aligned with the framework of the study, because it explores the multiple types of Englishes use by the youth to make meanings in their everyday contexts and to seek how far such informal uses of English can be helpful for the English use at formal settings (Tamimi Sa’d, 2018).

The qualitative research approach is utilized to investigate the nature of the everyday digital literacy practices of the undergraduates including their use of language, the purposes that motivate them and how their identities get shaped through these everyday digital literacy practices. The proposed study is aligned to the sociocultural perspective on digital literacies framework which is consistent with the qualitative research approach. Digital ethnography is used as the methodology of this study. Digital ethnography provides opportunities to study the complex, extended, and interconnected web of online and offline based literacy practices of undergraduates using digital platforms unlike the conventional place-bound ethnography (Hine, 2016; Pink et al., 2016). The theory of practice architectures is used in my study to have an in-depth understanding and analysis of the complexity of everyday digital literacy practices which are shaped both by the digital and social contexts in which they occur. Drawing from the idea that practices are comprised of ‘doings’, ‘sayings’, and ‘relatings’, practice architectures demonstrate how these interconnected characteristics of practices are bundled together into arrangements in the intersubjective spaces of sociality as cultural-discursive arrangements, material-economic arrangements and socio-political arrangements (Kemmis et al., 2014). Semi-structured interviews are used in this study because this method considered as a ‘conversation with a purpose’(Jamshed, 2014) where the researcher is carrying out a formal conversation with pre-prepared open-ended questions positioned purposefully. In this study, participants were individually interviewed for one hour using the digital platform zoo twice within the data collection period. Digital artefacts are used as another method of data collection in this study. Digital artefacts are used due to its importance as a source of information regarding an individual’s view of the world, believes, and attitudes (Akemu & Abdelnour, 2018). The digital artefacts used in this study were 25 digital literacy proformas from each participant and eight screenshots of their everyday digital literacy practices. The six-phase outline of thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clerk (2006) is used to analyse data.

The expected outcome of this study has a few layers. First, it is to identify the nature of the everyday digital practices of the undergraduates. Since the current study explores the opportunities within these everyday digital literacy practices to learn English as a second language, in-depth information regarding their networks, explore its local, translocal and international connectivity and engagement, and most importantly the languages they frequently use to express their ideas are important. Information regarding their motivation in participating in these digital literacy activities and different types of identities they hold will provide a clear picture of the nature of their everyday digital literacy practices. Following these insights gathered from the everyday digital literacy practices of the undergraduates, the second outcome is to provide suggestion to the current English language curriculum in the high education to redesign it according to the contemporary demands and the everyday needs of the students. In conclusion, the findings of this study will inform the policymakers about the gaps that exist between the everyday digital literacy practices and the English language curriculum for undergraduates. Most of the previous studies conducted on the English language learning in the higher education sector focus on curriculum, pedagogy, teachers’ expertise and perception on English, challenges and graduate unemployability. This study addresses one of the key reasons affecting most of these English language problems, the mismatch between their classroom practices and their practical application in the everyday life. This study focuses on the digital dimension of the English literacy practices since it is a very important parameter for employability of the graduates. The initiative taken from this study to bring our attention beyond the traditional classroom settings to authentic settings will be important for future studies.

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