Journal/Magazine Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/13
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 the adapted Box Clever language intervention programme in the development of vocabulary and narrative skills of deaf and hard of hearing children(Taylor & Francis, 2022) Hettiarachchi, S.ABSTRACT: Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) in Sri Lanka have inadequate access to early amplification and language stimulation. As a result, they are at risk of impoverished language development: spoken language and sign language. Thirty DHH children who use Sri Lankan sign language between the ages of 4;4-7;2 years from three classrooms of a School for the Deaf were included in this study. The culturally-modified Box Clever language-enrichment programme was offered as a whole-class approach twice a week during a 12-week school term through the class teacher. Pre- and post-intervention language measures and statistical analyses of language scores were undertaken of receptive and expressive vocabulary on picture-naming tasks of target vocabulary. In addition, content and syntactic analyses of narrative skills were undertaken using the Elephant Tales Narrative Assessment, an informal assessment created by the researchers, as no local formal standardised assessments exist currently. There were promising results with statistically significant positive gains in receptive and expressive vocabulary skills on target vocabulary items post-intervention by all the participants. Positive qualitative differences were observed in the content within the target narrative assessment post-intervention by all participants with evidence of the emergence of two to three sign combinations by many of the children. KEYWORDS: Deaf, vocabulary, narrative skills, language intervention, sign-language, Sri Lanka, whole-class, LMICItem 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.