WSEAS Transactions on Advances in Engineering Education
Print ISSN: 1790-1979, E-ISSN: 2224-3410
Volume 10, 2013
Netspeak Standards: Measuring the Quantity Within the Closed Asynchronous Discussions
Authors: , ,
Abstract: Rapid development of new technology and everyday use of new forms of communication like MSN, Skype, Facebook, SMS, etc. in various ways affect and change the language in order to create a new language form - Netspeak. The use of Netspeak erases the boundary between written language and spoken language. Thanks to universally recognized symbols Netspeak is becoming globalised form so perhaps the attempt once tried with Esperanto begins to live with Netspeak. In order to measure the amount of Netspeak elements, 10 standards have been developed that can be divided into four groups: standards related to information and communication technology (ICT), grammar and spelling (G), prosody (P) and others (O). In this paper the authors measure the amount of Netspeak elements in online asynchronous discussions within the course Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) taught in the first semester at the Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM). The research is conducted among four different generations of students. The results show that the amount of Netspeak elements is higher in student-student discussions which are less formal than the professor-student discussions which are more formal. Similar results were demonstrated by measuring the density of Netspeak depending on the number of characters in the discussion. Furthermore, students who more frequently use Netspeak elements in the professor-student discussions will use more frequently Netspeak elements in the student-student discussion, too.
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Keywords: Asynchronous discussion, Netspeak standards, Information and Communication Technologies, elearning, professor-student discussion, student-student discussion