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Abstract-The study reported in this article examined Finnish EFL learners' ability to search for lexical items and information in online dictionaries and on websites. The study was conducted as part of a project investigating upper secondary school students' digital skills in relation to language learning. The motivation behind the study was that in Finland, the high-stakes school-leaving examinations, including foreign language tests, are currently being digitalized. The aim of the study was to uncover the relationship between word recognition skills and the learners' ability to find lexical items and information in a series of online vocabulary tasks when the choice of the digital sources was not controlled. The results showed, for example, that overall word recognition skills and recognition of low-frequency vocabulary correlated positively with success rates in finding individual words in online dictionaries and factually accurate information on webpages, but not with finding appropriate collocations. Moreover, to succeed in 50% of the look-ups required scoring a minimum of 60% in the vocabulary levels test.

The study investigated cohesion in Finnish upper-secondary school EFL learners’ essays (N=46). Cohesive devices were digitally identified using TAACO 2.0.4, and robust correlations were run to examine how the devices related to human-rated holistic essay quality. The analyses found that the two most important predictors of writing quality were the use of modifying adverbs and adverbials as referential devices across paragraphs, and a wide array of connectives to organise the text. Further, the writing sessions were video-recorded to examine the role of consulting digital sources in cohesionbuilding. The recorded data suggested that consulting online dictionaries and informational pages assisted cohesion-building if the writer possessed adequate vocabulary knowledge and computer skills and knew how to exploit the sources efficiently. Pedagogically, the findings indicated that learners need more instruction and practice not only on writing cohesive texts but also on how to search for information and lexis effectively.