How Does the Use of Modern Communication Technology Influence Language and Literacy Development? A Review <s> The Language of Modern Communication Technology <s> Preface 1. A linguistic perspective 2. The medium of Netspeak 3. Finding an identity 4. The language of e-mail 5. The language of chatgroups 6. The language of virtual worlds 7. The language of the Web 8. The future of the Internet Index. <s> BIB001 </s> How Does the Use of Modern Communication Technology Influence Language and Literacy Development? A Review <s> The Language of Modern Communication Technology <s> The article examines the two distinct modes of text-based discussion in computer-mediated communication: synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (delayed time). How these two forms impact student cognitive and affective outcomes in a learning environment is considered. The substance of the research concerns an educational psychology course where both synchronous web chat-style discussion and asynchronous web post-style discussion was used. The results of a student survey show that the type of discussion used did not have a demonstrable effect on student test performance. <s> BIB002
Communicating via technology occupies a unique middle ground between using spoken and written language for communication. Electronic discourse, such as that used in e-mails, text messages, or Internet chat rooms, often resembles writing that reads as if it were being spoken. Some researchers have termed this form of language "written speech" or "spoken writing" BIB001 . It has been suggested that this form of "netspeak" may represent an entirely new language register  . If children are increasingly communicating in an alternative language form, this may have implications for their communication and literacy skills, as it may be encouraging the development of new skills or leading to the loss of others. In his book Language and the Internet, Crystal (2006) outlined some key distinctions between speech and writing that are relevant when considering the use of written speech and its impact on a person's language and literacy skills. Speech is time bound and dynamic and forms part of an interaction, whereas writing is space bound, permanent, and static. In speech, there is no time lag between the expression and reception of information, and speech exchanges are usually spontaneous and rapid. Writing does have a time lag, allowing the writer to edit and rephrase information, considering expressions and the needs of the reader. In speech, sentence boundaries are often unclear, and speech interactions contain loose grammatical constructions, such as natural pauses, repetitions, rephrasing, interruptions, and overlap. Informal speech contains many vague expressions, slang terms, and nonsense vocabulary (e.g., watchamacallit). A great deal of spoken communication is also nonverbal; facial expression and gestures convey a great deal of meaning. The nuances and prosody of speech such as tempo, loudness, and tone of voice also convey a great deal of meaning. In writing, however, sentences are carefully and concisely structured with punctuation. Written expressions are usually unambiguous because the vocabulary needs to convey the intended meaning without reference to contextual nonverbal cues, although some orthographic cues, such as capitalization and line and letter spacing, can be used. With mobile telephones and some computer software, it is possible to use spoken language to communicate a conversation in real time, as if one is face-to-face with another person. However, it is currently more common to use written communication as the primary means of computer-mediated communication  ), although it is also possible to switch between these two forms or use both simultaneously. This form of electronic discourse can be "synchronous" (i.e., taking place in real time, as in an online chat room) or "asynchronous" (i.e., taking place with a time delay, as in e-mail; BIB002 . The nature of language in this written communication is heavily dependent on the service being used and the recipient of the information. For example, e-mails may resemble a traditional letter or they may more closely resemble written speech, similar to that used in a real-time online chat room  BIB001 . It is therefore interesting to consider whether different language and literacy skills are required for this alternative communication method, or whether existing skills can simply be adapted.