English Language Training Unit
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Item Acquisition of Prepositions by ESL Learners through Dictation Tasks(KALYANI Journal of the University of Kelaniya, 2018) Jayasinghe, R.R.The study examines the acquisition of English prepositions by Sinhala speaking learners of English with respect to four fine-grained categories of prepositions found by Littlefield (2006) using first language acquisition of English speaking children. The acquisition order of these four categories found by Littlefield: adverbial prepositions [+Lexical, -Functional] , particles [-Lexical, -Functional] , semi-lexical prepositions [+Lexical, +Functional] , and functional prepositions [¬Lexical, +Functional] , showed an advantage of [-Functional] features over the [+ Functional] features. One of the aims of the study was to find out whether this ranking was good for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in tasks that tap comprehension knowledge (dictation task). The second aim was to see whether at initial stages of learning, there was an advantage of either [+Lexical] features or [-Functional] features, which disappeared at later stages of learning. 316 Sinhala speaking learners of English studying in Grades 4, 6, 8 and 10 answered a dictation task with 40 sentences, 10 each with adverbial prepositions, semi-lexical prepositions, particles and functional prepositions. Sentence length and structure was controlled and sentences differed only in the category of preposition used in them. The main findings of this task were as follows: (1) ESL learners imitated the four categories of prepositions differently in the dictation task. (2) [+Lexial] prepositions were better imitated than [-Lexical] prepositions initially, and this 'lexical' advantage disappeared in Grade 10 with all categories being used with comparable accuracy. These findings are recommended to be used in the ESL classroom to facilitate teaching prepositionsItem Error Analysis on Prepositions Used by the Learners of English as a Second Language in Writing(International Journal of Social Science and Technology, 2018-06) Jayasinghe, R.R.This study examines omission errors, substitution errors and addition errors in the usage of prepositions by the learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in writing tasks. The main purpose of the study Is 10 investigate: whether the school children in lower grades tend to omit prepositions more often than in highs? grades whereas in higher grades, they show more substitution and addition errors. A pool of 260 Sinhala speaking students from four grades (Grade 4, Grade 6, Grade 8 and Grade 10) participated in this study, picture story writing task where prepositions needed to be abundantly used was administered, and errors the use of prepositions were analysed. The main findings concluded; although more omission errors were found in the lower grades significantly, the increase in substitution errors towards higher grades is not w sharp. These findings can be used in the ESL classroom to facilitate teaching English prepositions.Item A comparison between the acquisition of phrasal verbs and spatial prepositions by Sinhala speaking ESL learners(8th Research Conference, the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, 2015) Jayasinghe, R.R.The phrasal verbs are phrases which consist of a verb in combination with a preposition. They are not only used in spoken and informal English, but also in written and even formal English. According to Fraser 1965, 1976; Bolinger 1971, the prepositions in phrasal verbs trigger an aspectual or idiomatic meaning as follows: (1) The small girl ate up the biscuits (aspectual-finished sense). (2) Women drink skim milk to shape up their bodies (idiomatic). Here up gives an unpredictable meaning and the meaning of shape up cannot be gathered by adding the meanings of the two words: shape and up Spatial prepositions show the spatial relation between two entities, for example, The box is under the bed or the path of movement of one object with respect to another entity, for example, The man swam across the river. The study examines the acquisition of phrasal verbs and spatial prepositions of Sinhala speaking ESL learners in Grade 4 and Grade 6 by using elicited imitation data. The study aims to investigate which category of these prepositions should be introduced first in the ESL class-room through listening comprehension tasks. A dictation task will be administered for about 60 students from each grade from two schools in Colombo. A sentence battery containing 10 sentences each with phrasal verbs and spatial prepositions will be used in this study. Students will be instructed to listen to these 20 sentences carefully and write them in the given answer sheets. Elicitated imitation data will be collected, and quantitative statistical analysis will be applied using SPSS to examine whether there is a significant difference between the acquisition of two categories of preposition within and across the grades. The findings would be used to make necessary suggestions for teaching phrasal verbs and spatial prepositions for Sinhala students. If the acquisition of one of these two categories of preposition shows an advantage over the other, that particular category must be introduced earlier than the other in the ESL class -room.Item Acquisition of English Prepositions by the ESL Learners of Sri Lanka(the International Conference on Postcolonial Societies in Transition, 2015) Jayasinghe, R.R.Sri Lanka inherited English Language from its last colonizers, the British and a positive interest was taken by British in teaching English for the Sinhala speaking students since then. Today, in postcolonial era, formal teaching of English as a second language (ESL) is introduced in government schools from Grade 3 onwards. Teachers of English in Sri Lanka are well aware that English prepositions are one of the most difficult areas for them to teach ESL students. Moreover, Thilakaratne 1992 shows that in English, prepositions are words, while in Sinhala they are represented as spatial postpositions or suffixes (locative, ablative Case) and create learning difficulties for ESL learner. The study examines the acquisition of prepositions by Sinhala speaking learners of English with respect to the four fine-grained categories of prepositions, where the evidence for the existence has been found by Littlefield (2006) through first language acquisition using five English speaking children (aged 1;2-2;3). The present study aims to validate or disprove this type of fine-grained approach to preposition on the basis of Sinhala speaking ESL learners’ responses in a dictation task. A total number of 65 Sinhala students from Grade 4 from two government schools will be examined for the test and a sentence battery of 40 sentences with10 sentences each for adverbs, semi-lexical prepositions, and functional prepositions will be used in the dictation task. Elicited imitation method is used to collect data and will be analysed statistically by using SPSS. Based on the findings, the order of acquisition of prepositions in comprehension would be detected, and this order could be suggested as a user friendly guideline to teach English prepositions in the ESL class-room.Item Acquisition of English prepositions by ESL learners in Sri Lanka: A comparison between Grade 4 and Grade 6 of Government schools(Annual Research Symposium conducted by the National Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities & Social Sciences Sri Lanka, 2015) Jayasinghe, R.R.Research and simple observation indicate that English prepositions are a problem for learners at every level of proficiency (Cowan, 2008). Littlefield (2006) has investigated the existence of four fine-grained categories of prepositions in the domain of prepositions by analyzing first language acquisition of five children (aged 1;2-2;3) using naturalistic speech data as follows: (1) Adverbial prepositions [+ Lexical, -Functional], (2) Semi-lexical prepositions [+Lexical, +Functional], (3) Particles [-Lexical, - Functional], (4) Functional Prepositions [- Lexical, + Functional] Littlefield considered as [+Lexical] those that contribute semantic content, and as [+Functional] those that are able to check the Case of their complements.The overall objective of the study was to validate the existence of these fine-grained categories of the domain of English prepositions by using ESL learners in Grade 4 (aged 9- 9;11) and Grade 6 ( 11- 11;11) of two government schools in Sri Lanka and to compare the order of acquisition of English prepositions in Grade 4 with Grade 6. A dictation task was administered to 65 students from each Grade in two schools. Ten sentences each with each category of preposition were recorded, played to the students and requested them to write them down. The findings were quantified and analyzed using SPSS. . The findings of the study validated Littlefield’s 2006 study that there are four categories of prepositions in the domain of English prepositions. The results showed that in both grades there is a significant difference in the acquisition of adverbial prepositions with particles and functional prepositions. There is no significant difference between the other categories of prepositions in both grades. The findings also showed that the order of the acquisition of English prepositions in Grade 4 and Grade 6 were similar and the sentences with [+Lexical] prepositions are imitated better than the sentences with [-Lexical] categories. The observations conclude that the existence of four fine-grained categories of preposition is validated by ESL learners of both Grade 4 and Grade 6. Both Grades showed the same order of acquisition of English prepositions and it differs from the native speakers’ order. The order of acquisition of English prepositions, found in this study is recommended to the teachers of English to use at the ESL classroom to facilitate teaching English prepositions in schools effectively.Item Effective Use of Home Language and Translanguaging in Learning Spellings by ESL Learners(12th British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL), 2016) Jayasinghe, R.Recent studies show that educational programs that systematically incorporate the use of English Language Learner’s (ELLs’) home languages result in achievement in English literacy and other academic subjects often better than ELLs in English only programs (Genesee & Lindholm- Leary, in press). Lindholm and Aclan (1991) found a significant positive relationship between ELLs’ bilingual proficiency and their performance in reading in English. The aim of the study is to examine whether the Sinhala speaking ESL (English as a Second Language) learner’s bilingual home language (Sinhala and English) shows a positive influence in learning spellings of English words. Sinhala spelling is phonetic whereas English spelling is not phonetic that some of its words cannot be spelt by merely following the way they are pronounced (e.g. psychology). The hypothesis of the study is that the young Sinhala speaking ESL learners follow their parents’ pronunciation in English words and spell them as the way they are pronounced. A pool of 65 students in Grade 4 were examined. A dictation task consisted of 40 sentences containing one preposition each was used. Both accurate spelling of the prepositions and the number of home languages of each learner were analyzed. ANOVA will be computed using SPSS12. If there is a significant positive impact on the accuracy of the spellings of the given prepositions by the bilingual home language, these learners’ home languages and translanguaging can be used to facilitate teaching spellings of the English words which can be merely spelt following their pronunciation.Item A comparative study on the acquisition of the four categories of prepositions in writing by the ESL learners in Sri Lanka: Grade 8 and Grade 10(Asia TEFL International Conference, 2017) Jayasinghe, R.The present study attempts to validate or disprove the fine-grained categorization of English prepositions found by Littlefield (2006), on the basis of ESL (English as a Second Language) learners’ acquisition patterns in a writing task. In English, prepositions are words while in Sinhala, they are represented as spatial postpositions or as suffixes (Thilakaratne 1992). This particular cross-linguistic variation as well as the polysemy and the idiosyncrasy of some English prepositions make a negative impact on the acquisition of English prepositions to the ESL learners whose first language is Sinhala. Littlefield (2006) found the existence of four categories of English prepositions as follows: Adverbial prepositions [+Lexical, -Functional], Particles [-Lexical, -Functional], Semi-lexical prepositions [+Lexical, +Functional], and Functional prepositions [ -Lexical, +Functional]. Using naturalistic speech data of five native speakers, Littlefield (2006) has found that the prepositions with [-Functional] categories show an advantage over the prepositions with [+Functional] categories in the acquisition of English prepositions. Here, [+Lexical] featured prepositions are those that contribute semantic content and prepositions with [+Functional] assign Case to their complements. This study examines the frequency as well as the accuracy of production of the four categories of prepositions in writing. It aims to compare the acquisition patterns of prepositions of ESL learners in writing. A picture story writing task in which prepositions needed to be abundantly used was utilized to collect production data from 40 randomly selected students each from Grade 8 and Grade 10 in two schools. Interaction effects and category wise analysis were computed and a two way ANNOVA was run by using SPSS. If the prepositions with [-Functional] rank higher than the prepositions with [+ Functional] features the relevant order can be used to facilitate the teaching of English prepositions and also to prepare the study guides and text books for the relevant Grades in schools.Item Buddhism, Mindfulness Based Intervention and the Eclectic Parenting Style Construct in Sri Lankan Female Undergraduates(2016) Widyalankara, R.C.Literature states that Authoritative parenting style has a significant role in predicting high quality academic achievement. The hypothesis of this study, while recognizing the positive correlation between authoritative parenting style and academic achievement, investigates the contribution of the demandingness and control of authoritarian parenting and the indulgent responsiveness of permissive parenting towards academic achievement. The religious dimension: Buddhism, is kept a constant and is examined as a contributing factor. Thus the population of the research, middle class, female undergraduates high in academic achievement are Buddhists. Utilizing a quantitative approach the instrument consisted of a Parental Styles Dimensions Questionnaire. A sample of 50 undergraduates of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka obtained under selective followed by random sampling procedures are the respondents of the study. The mean age for the sample is 23.31 years and all are female. Academic performance was measured through the GPA obtained at the end of the academic year 2014/2015 and all participants recorded an above 3.5 score. As data analysis procedures the study employs descriptive level mean and standard deviation methods. The results indicated that the Authoritative Parenting Style was primarily used by the parents of the undergraduates. But characteristics of authoritarian and permissive parenting styles too had a lesser but significant presence in their upbringing. Thus, based on the evaluation on the tertiary level undergraduate population, it is hypothesized that an eclectic method in parenting contributes towards academic achievement enhanced through maximized Buddhist values founded on mindfulness based intervention.Item Can virtual space become the Zone of Proximal Development? Online architecture optimization of ESL courses through Learning Analytics(2016) Widyalankara, R.C.This study recognizes that the provision of Vygotsky’s More Knowledgeable Others (MKOs) within the Zone of Proximal Development of online courses as a unique challenge to all stakeholders. Extending the data-driven decision making culture at the Centre for Distance and Continuing Education of University of Kelaniya to the newly introduced online course English for Communication, the aim of this study is to develop a learning analytics mindset to predict at-risk students enabling timely intervention. Further, future cohorts of the course are provided analytics on student performance thus enabling them to take decisions to improve the course especially to address the necessity for increased MKO availability. Capturing attendance data benefits the need to identify reasons for absenteeism. The instrument was a 100 mark allotting paper which evaluated three of the four skills: Reading, Writing and Speaking. The total population was stratified into 19 centres across provinces. The corpus for analysis (n= 3700) was selected under stratified random sampling procedures from which approximately 200 papers were shortlisted from each centre. Findings illustrate the diversity of Poverty and prosperity indices and Digital denizenship across the provinces have a significant influence on the performance of the population. The % mean marks distribution indicated a strong variation based on the province. Thus this study provides Learning analytics which constructs an information-rich landscape for the functional groups for understanding and optimizing the learning process of the students who offer the course. The findings benefit educational mandates of similar institutions who face the challenge of handling groups which are non-monolithic in proficiency in English and Digital denizenship but who are monolithic in size.Item International feedback in naturalistic interaction between L2 English learners(Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2015) Ranaweera, M.
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