Netspeak in asynchronous student-student discussion among different faculty, gender and language groups

In this Research Full Paper, the amount of Netspeak elements in the discussion student-student among the students at the Faculty of Technical Sciences (FTS, Novi Sad, Serbia), and among students at Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM, Croatia) is compared. Asynchronous discussions are an important part of each e-learning system since they allow students to choose when they will be included in the discussion. Numerous studies specifically encourage student-student discussion in which students are freer to express their opinion than in a professor-student discussion moderated by a professor. The sample consists of 135 students, 75 of whom are students of ZSEM, and 60 of them are from FTS. All of them are in the first year of their college education. The analyzed discussions are conducted in the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle on courses English Language (FTS) and Information and Communication Technologies (ZSEM). Student-student discussions are in English (FTS) and in Croatian (ZSEM). The methodological approach taken was to measure the amount of Netspeak elements in the discussion. Netspeak is a language form that generates itself from a spoken and a symbolic language. It is developing very rapidly and through the use of new technologies such as Skype, Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. Its main feature is the extensive use of abbreviations, emoticons, and punctuation. In order to conduct quantitative analysis, the methodology for measuring the frequency in using Netspeak elements through ten standards was used. These standards are divided into four following groups: standard related to information and communication technology (ICT), Grammar and syntax (G), Prosody (P) and Others (O). The difference in the use of Netspeak elements will be analyzed between both groups, particularly differences between the type of standards used, between different languages and genders. Also, the correlation between using Netspeak elements and the final grade on the course will be calculated. It is expected that both groups of students will have Netspeak elements in their discussions, but that there will be some differences in the standards they use.