Journal/Magazine Articles
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This collection contains original research articles, review articles and case reports published in local and international peer reviewed journals by the staff members of the Faculty of Medicine
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Item The Effectiveness of a multisensory traditional storytelling programme on target vocabulary development in children with disabilities accessing English as a second language: A preliminary study(SAGE Publications, 2022) Hettiarachchi, S.; Walisundara, D.C.; Ranaweera, M.ABSTRACT: The current deliberations on increasing access to English and the democratization of English in post-war Sri Lanka must extend to students with disabilities. Research evidence from speech and language therapy promotes the use of multi-sensory stimuli to advance the development of communication and language skills in children with intellectual disabilities. In this preliminary study, 3 local children's stories, together with relevant story-making activities, were offered to 7 children with intellectual disabilities in one special school across 12 lessons. Vocabulary measures of word naming of target vocabulary were undertaken pre- and post-intervention using picture-based tasks presented via PowerPoint. A positive difference was found post-intervention on the target vocabulary naming test. The findings of this small preliminary study should be interpreted with caution. However, the findings are suggestive of the potential benefit of using culturally relevant familiar local traditional stories with a range of multi-sensory stimuli and storytelling activities to aid learning of new vocabulary in children with disabilities accessing English as an additional language. Further research using a large sample together with a control group will be required to substantiate the positive trend of vocabulary gains observed within this preliminary study. KEYWORDS: English; intellectual disability; multisensory; stories; traditional.Item Story Boxes: using a multisensory story approach to develop vocabulary in children experiencing language-learning difficulties(Infonomics Society, UK, 2013) Hettiarachchi, S.; Ranaweera, M.One challenge faced by special education teachers in Sri Lanka is in the implementation of whole-class vocabulary enrichment activities. There has been a growing interest in using multisensory, interactive storytelling as a means of encouraging vocabulary development. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating local stories into multi-sensory story-telling and story-making activities as part of a whole-class speech and language therapy programme to assist the teaching and learning of target vocabulary. Two local children’s stories together with relevant story-telling and story-making activities were introduced to 30 children with language learning difficulties accessing special education in the south of the country. The children received weekly storytelling sessions for 3 months via trained teaching staff. Receptive and expressive vocabulary measures were undertaken before and after the introduction of the approach together with teacher and parent comments. There was a positive difference in the target receptive and expressive vocabulary of each student following the block of therapy using the Story boxes multi-sensory storytelling/story-making approach. Additional positive changes were noticed in the children’s attention and listening skills and in their motivation to attend to activities during ‘story time’. The use of local, traditional stories incorporating a multi-sensory story telling and story-making framework was found to aid the receptive and expressive vocabulary skills of children with language-learning difficulties.