Browsing by Author "Widyalankara, R.C."
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Item Acoustic characteristics of three vowels of standard Sri Lankan English(International Journal of Science and Research, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Acoustic evidence for three selected phonological norms of Standard Sri Lankan English(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.The phonology of Standard Sri Lankan English (SSLE) reflects a strong influence from the vernaculars of Sri Lanka: Sinhala and Tamil. This results in deviations from the donor colonial Standard British English pronunciation. This study provides acoustic evidence for threeselected phonological norms of SSLE: retreat of the diphthongs /ei/ and /əʊ/ to the unmarked /e:/ and /o:/ respectively; the absence of /ɒ/;presence and the differentiation of the back vowels /ɔ/, /o/; the retreat of the vowels central mid /ʌ/ and back /ɑ:/ to central open position as /ɑ/ /ɑ:/. Evidence is compiled through Rate of Change in the diphthongs and F1 and F2 formant readings of acoustic documentation from elicitations of two bilingual case study subjects are compared to data in literature. Of the two bilingual case study subjects one has Sinhala and the other Tamil as the first language while SSLE is their second language. Theoretical underpinning invokes language specific markednessconstraint ranking and retreat to the unmarked.Item Bilingual pronunciation and first language dominancy(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.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 Cooperative and collaborative language learning: an action plan(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Cross cultural aspects of classroom management in Sri Lanka(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Dialectal variation in Sri Lankan English pronunciation(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Does proficiency in the second language influence bilingual(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.Item The expediency hypothesis and models of secondary term formation in ICT terminology in Sinhala: A bilingual corpus analysis(International Journal of Scientific & Research Publications, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Interlingual Texting: Texting in Sinhala Using English Fonts(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.In the sphere of communication in Sri Lanka using English fonts for recording Sinhala discourse during the use of Short Message Service or Interlingual Texting is very popular. Analyzing such discourse this study argues that the asymmetry in the phonologies of Sinhala and English, and the difficulty in graphically denoting of sounds of Sinhala in English make the deciphering of Interlingual texts complex leading to unintelligibility and ambiguity of the messages. Data analysis further identifies a formal vs. colloquial dichotomy in the register of interlingual texting. The nonvolitional and nonelective transfer of fossilized loan phonology of Sinhala too is evidenced in the register. The spread of language of Interlingual texting to English print media too is noted in this sociolinguistic analysis.Item Interlingual texting: Texting in Sinhala using English fonts(International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.Item The judicious analysis of The Nightingale and the Rose for people of fifteen(Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.Item The judicious integration of LI in ESL learning contexts(2009) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Kaduva?- Creating Affinity Towards English through Judicious Integration of Sinhala(University of Kelaniya, 2007) Widyalankara, R.C.Kaduva is a double edged lexical item, an antagonistic descriptor for English, which has been in existence within the vocabulary of colloquial Sinhala since the70s. Some of the key words associated with the lexical item in existing theory and research on Kaduva areelitists, privileged, language of power, social indicator, rural masses, oppression, subjugation, resistance etc. After a dormant period the lexical item is re-emerging within the linguistic repertoire of the undergraduate community of the faculty of Arts. The paper explores the current sociolinguistic status of the term and discusses whether the usage has undergone a semantic change. The findings of the study are interpreted as reflecting an attitudinal shift which is indicated by the new terminology associated with Kaduva. Yet within a minority of undergraduate respondents the former associations are still very much alive. With this attitudinal change in the majority, language planners should maximize the opportunity to provide language teaching mechanisms which not only accelerate learning but also create further affinity towards the language- English. One such mechanism is the judicious integration of Sinhala in teaching English as a second language. Such mechanisms should be able to pave a path towards linguistic socialism- a society where proficiency in a language, English in this instance, should be equally distributed and every individual has the fundamental right for linguistic equality. But this results in a paradoxical situation where according to the current statistics on the proficiency levels in English among the first year undergraduates who have registered for [S L courses in 2007 it seems just linguistic utopia.Item The lumber room: ideal artefact for prose analysis + an epistle on child rearing(International Journal of Scientific & Research Publications, 2015) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Teaching English as a second language = Theory + Methods + Creativity(2014) Widyalankara, R.C.Item Vocabulary acquisition through reading and provision of glosses(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2010) Widyalankara, R.C.