Browsing by Author "Kithulgoda, E."

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Revaluing ESP teaching: Applying Multi-Dimensional Analysis to teach genres to Sri Lankan undergraduates
(International Conference on the Humanities (ICH 2018/2019), Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Kithulgoda, E.
It has been a long felt need in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogy to provide more authentic and effective lesson materials to teachers instructing undergraduates on genres related to professional contexts. In this regard, introducing corpus analysis techniques to traditional ESP teaching becomes invaluable when considering the mismatches that have been cited between the content of existing teaching materials and the reality of the actual use of language- a problem which has undermined the value of traditional ESP teaching and has presented itself as a challenge for ESP practitioners to overcome. This paper presents the partial findings of a corpus driven research study conducted on two speech genres pertaining to the professional world - the Welcome Address and the Vote of Thanks, and reports their characteristics and lexico-grammatical features. Two specialised corpora were compiled, and a dimensional analysis, a concept introduced by Douglas Biber, was conducted using the tool Multi-dimensional Analysis Tagger. Results reveal that both genres are informational and non-narrative in nature with elaborated situation independent reference. They possess an above average use of nominalizations and other nouns, prepositional phrases, first and second person pronouns, amplifiers, sentence relatives, WH relative clauses on subject position, infinitives, phrasal co-ordination, split infinitives and lengthy words. However, while the Welcome Address does not mark the author‘s point of view, the Vote of Thanks is unmarked in this dimension. While the Vote of Thanks is found to be non-technical and non-abstract, the Welcome Address is unmarked in this fifth dimension. Drawing on the research findings, exercises were designed to help students produce stylistically authentic speeches with an accurate use of language.
Should We Say „This Is Wrong‟? ; Impact of Explicit Corrective Feedback on Language Accuracy
(Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Kithulgoda, E.
In terms of pedagogy, the methodological options whereby a teacher can impart grammar knowledge to students are of two kinds: Learner performance options and Feedback options. Although learner performance options have been an unquestionable part of English grammar teaching in the Sri Lankan L2 classroom, feedback options are not always stringently practiced due to various reasons. The current study explores whether one of these feedback options -explicit corrective feedback- could be employed as an effective form of grammar instruction, in order to improve the English language accuracy of intermediate level English medium undergraduates. The study while analysing the most salient errors made by 25 undergraduates of Kotelawala Defence University, explored the impact of explicit corrective feedback on those different error types. The methodology adopted was: i) Teacher feedback of classroom language production tasks coupled with pre and post tests, ii ) Descriptive analysis of pre and post test data, iii) Quantitative comparative analysis of pre and post test data by employing paired sample t-test and multiple regression analysis of errors. Findings revealed that out of sixteen types of lexical errors and morpho syntactic errors made by undergraduates, errors related to Sentence structure, Prepositions, Verb agreement, Determiners, Usage norms and formulaic expressions and Pluralisation were the six most salient error types. Moreover, it was revealed that although explicit corrective feedback had no significant impact on language accuracy as a whole in general class room context, it has a significant impact on lexical accuracy (rather than morpho syntactic accuracy). Additionally, it was revealed that the number of words per t-unit had increased after feedback. Hence, it can be assumed that either feedback or continuous language production or both had positively affected language complexity.