Symposia & Conferences
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Item First Language Interference: “Like” as in /wæni/.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Nadakumara, U.A.Utilization of prepositions, among the learners of English as the second language, has been a much debated and researched topic in the field of linguistics. Abundant linguistic research is conducted upon the quotidian English prepositions and the interference of the first language (L1) in the usage of English prepositions by its learners. However, it seemed that “like” is a less attended yet a tendentious preposition in relation to its usage among the learners of the Sri Lankan ESL context. The focus of this research is to determine whether ESL learners use the preposition “like” by directly translating it from its seemingly equivalent /wæni/ in Sinhala; to calculate the rate of such users who learn English as the L2 in a tertiary level educational institution; to analyze whether such direct translation is a learner mistake or an error. Two methodologies were employed in this research. One was an Error Analysis of the written compositions in English done by 37 undergraduates whose L1 is Sinhala. The second was a group interview with the same 37 undergraduates in order to gather and compare the data with the first methodology to distinguish between the ones who make mistakes and errors in the use of the preposition “like”. The results disclose that fifty percent of the ESL learners erroneously adopt the L1 syntactic structure in using the preposition “like” in English, as a direct translation of the syntactic structure of their L1. This paper therefore confers the need of correcting the error committed by the ESL learners and the worth of bringing forward topics of further research related to the aspect discussed.Item Use of prepositions among University students learning English as a Second language(Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Madhushani, H.N.G.; Athapaththu, A.M.H.K.; Athapaththu, S.P.; Navarathne, A.S.; Kumari, H.R.U.E.Prepositional usage is a difficult grammar area among the students who are learning English as a second language. Thus, it has been demonstrated that even undergraduates learning English as a second language face difficulties when using prepositions accurately. The present study is an attempt not only to identify the common errors made by the students in using prepositions, but also to recognize the more familiar prepositions used among the students. This has led to the assumption that both teaching and learning prepositions in English by the teachers and learners who study English as a second language are inadequate. Forty undergraduates representing the four faculties, ten from each, were given a questionnaire to be answered. Accordingly, the faculty of Humanities, the faculty of Social Sciences, the faculty of Management and the faculty of Science in the University of Kelaniya answered the questionnaire consisting of fifteen questions including two open ended questions. The findings revealed that the students of the faculty of Science possess a thorough knowledge regarding the accurate use of prepositions while the knowledge of the students in the faculty of Social Sciences regarding the use of prepositions was very low. Furthermore, prepositions that had been used more accurately were: ‘into’, ‘among’ and ‘from’, while the prepositions that had been misused frequently were: ‘on’, ‘between’ and ‘of’. Thereby, our research study became a success, signaling green lights for maiden future studies.Item Error analysis on English as a Second Language (ESL) Learners’ usage in prepositions in dictation tasks(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Jayasinghe, R.R.Sinhala speaking ESL (English as a Second Language) learners make many errors in the use of prepositions in given sentences, in dictation tasks, mainly due to cross-linguistic differences between their first and second languages. For example, English prepositions are words, but in Sinhala, they are represented as spatial postpositions, or as suffixes (locative and ablative case). Some prepositions are polysemous, and the Sinhala ESL learners often become frustrated when trying to distinguish their meanings. Therefore a study, investigating the error patterns in the usage of English prepositions by Sinhala speaking ESL learners in dictation is significant. Littlefield (2006) has found the existence of four categories of English prepositions with ±lexical and ±functional features: Adverbial prepositions [+Lexical, -Functional], Particles [-Lexical,- Functional], Semi-lexical [+Lexical, +Functional], Functional prepositions [-Lexical, + Functional]. The objective of this study is to examine whether Sinhala speaking ESL learners make more omission errors in [+Functional] prepositions than in [+Lexical] prepositions in dictation tasks; whether the category criterion will be preserved in substitutions; and whether these ESL learners in lower grades tend to omit prepositions more often than in higher grades whereas, in higher grades, they substitute prepositions more often than in lower grades. A pool of 316 Sinhala speaking ESL students from four grades: Grade 4, Grade 6, Grade 8 and Grade 10 participated in this study. A dictation task consisting 10 sentences each with adverbial prepositions, semi-lexical prepositions, particles and functional prepositions was used. The learners’ were asked to write down these sentences, and their errors were analysed using Excel, following experimental method. Findings concluded that the omissions were higher in lower grades and, substitutions were higher in higher grades and respected the category rule. The findings of error patterns can be used to minimize Sinhala speaking ESL learners’ errors in prepositions in dictation tasks, given in sentence form.Item Teaching English to Marketing Undergraduates - A Self Reflection(Department of English, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Hettiarachchi, A.This is a self- reflexive study of the researcher’s experience as an English Language teacher, which was carried out as an assignment for the course unit Literary Pedagogy.. A group of third year students of mixed ability, from the department of Marketing, varying from upper elementary level to lower intermediate level, was chosen to carry out a language lesson using a literary text, of which the focus was prepositions. Her presentation includes her personal viewpoints as well as the students’ view point on the effectiveness of the lesson and her own teaching methods. She will also address question of effectiveness in using literary texts in language teaching.