How university students use digital resources in written production in Spanish foreign language courses: a case study at a Portuguese university

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, there was a generalized suspension of face-to-face instruction in Portugal during 2020. In order to ensure continuity of education among the different educational levels, an emergency transition to remote teaching practices took place (Hodges et al., 2020; Ferri et al., 2020). Teachers and students increased their use of digital technologies, rapidly adapting their teaching and learning process to this new online learning situation. However, it is also very relevant to report on the experiences lived hands-on during this period, particularly in the higher education context. At this level, we have witnessed and experienced firsthand how writing has become the basis of most communicative acts in which we participate today. In this context, a preliminary case study was conducted to explore which digital linguistic resources do students use when writing in Spanish as a foreign language at a Portuguese university.