International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka (ICLSL)
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Item Colour me…orange? : Incorporating Aspects of the Colourful Semantics Approach into English as a Second Language Lessons at Preschool(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Hettiarachchi, S.; Walisundara, D.; Ranaweera, M.Among the challenges faced by Sri Lankan children learning English as an additional or second language is the accuracy of word order and vocabulary knowledge. The Colourful Semantics approach (Bryan, 2008) has been used successfully in the UK and in Australia with children experiencing language-learning difficulties (Bennington, 2011; Chiat, Law, Marshall & Bryan, 1997), with many programmes devised by Speech and Language Therapists (Morrissy, 2010; Wade, 2009). It uses thematic roles and a colour-coding system to support the development of syntax through a semantic route. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of using aspects of Colourful Semantics to develop vocabulary knowledge and the use of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structures in young learners of English. Twenty preschool children in ESL classrooms were included in the study. Key aspects of Colourful Semantics were introduced as a whole-class approach using children‟s storybooks, colour-coding and signing with lessons offered once a week for 12 weeks together with supplementary activities. Pre- and post-intervention measures were undertaken on five receptive and expressive language and literacy measures of vocabulary and syntax. In this presentation we will discuss the programme offered, the pre- and post-intervention assessment scores and statistical results on vocabulary and discuss the benefits of incorporating aspects of the Colourful Semantics approach into the English language teaching classroom.Item A Comparative Study of Language Skills in Young Men With and Without Traumatic Brain Injury(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Hettiarachchi, S.Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impacts among other skills on attention, orientation, cognition, communication and higher executive functions such as problem solving (ASHA, n.d.). The primary aim of the study was to explore the effects of focal brain injury on Sinhala soldiers. Ten soldiers following shrapnel head injuries (experimental groups-five right-hemisphere and five left-hemisphere) and their carers and five young men without head injuries (control group), all within the age of 20 to 35 years were included in the study. Language data were collected via a picture description task consisting of three target pictures from participants of both groups and data was gathered from a conversational task between the participants of the experimental groups and a caregiver using a question guide. The language data was analyzed qualitatively to document its syntactic structure and analyzed quantitatively on the syntactic category words produced by the two groups via one-way ANOVAs. In the control group, there was a trend towards higher mean scores on all five syntactic category variables and use of more complex syntax in comparison to the experimental groups. The one-way ANOVAs performed indicated a highly significant difference between the three groups of participants on the number of utterances (F (2, 14) = 13.65, p<0.005), the range of syntactic structures (F (2, 14) = 23.63, p<0.001) and syntactic complexity (F (2, 14) = 21.56, p<0.001). While reduced syntactic category words and structural differences were indicated in the picture description task for the experimental groups, the features perceived by the carers as hindering communication were non-linguistic such as articulation, memory and psychosocial difficulties.Reduced syntactic complexity and range and paucity of utterance were noted for the two experimental groups in comparison to the control group, in-line with literature on English. However, in contrast, the left-hemisphere group did not omit or produce fewer main verbs compared to the control group and the right-hemisphere head injury group indicated a paucity of nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Scrambled word order and subject/object deletion were not perceived as disrupting communication by the carers.