International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka (ICLSL)
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Item The Impact of Studying English Literature in Improving English as a Second Language(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Karunarathna, J.A.M.B.The four language skills are of varying degrees of importance to the second language learner. Listening and reading are considered as the receptive skills of language and speaking and writing are considered as the productive skills of language. Reading provides learners with a wide range of individual lexical or syntactic items. The students become familiar with many features of the written language such as syntax, discourse functions, by reading. The research aims at analysing the impact of English literature towards improving writing skills of English in the Sri Lankan context. The sample consists of 22 students who are learning English as a subject in the G.C.E. Advanced Level class, Co/Muslim Ladies College. The students have been learning English literature for a duration of 16 months. The instruments of data collection are questionnaires, interviews and analysis of texts written by the students in the 02nd week of study and in the 14th month. Specifically, in analysing the texts written by the students, the analysis was limited to subject-verb-object agreement, tenses, spellings and punctuation. An analysis of data was done descriptively and statistically, since both types of data, i.e. qualitative and quantitative data were collected. In the analysis of the texts 48% of improvement of accurate subject-verb-object agreement, 68% of improvement in the tenses, 52% of improvement of accurate spellings and 62% of accurate use of punctuation were observed. Thus, through the findings of the research, it could be discerned that learning English literature has a positive impact on improving writing skills of English as a second language.Item Relationship between Mode of Assessment and Second Language Performance: An Analysis Based on the Student Performance in Advanced Level General English Paper(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Dissanayake, S.A.R.R.P.General English paper, the paper for which the highest number of candidates (248482) appeared at GCE (A/L) examination in 2015, aimed at testing various language related abilities such as reading, vocabulary, grammar and writing skills. Both subjective and objective test items were included in the question paper. This study investigates the relationship between the types of test items and the student performance at this examination. The study is based on data obtained from the Research & Development Branch of the Department of Examinations, Sri Lanka. According to the data, facility indices for grammar (0.60), vocabulary (0.58) and reading skills (0.82) which were tested objectively are above the average. However, facility index for writing component (0.12) tested subjectively lies far below the average. A similar pattern could be identified in the analysis of student performances in previous examinations results (2012) too. The main issue arising from these data is the lower facility indices of subjective test items. While this can be interpreted in terms of examiner judgment variation, it is imperative to consider lower proficiency rates in productive skills. This suggests the performance gap between receptive skills and productive skills; students are able to recognise language elements in receptive modality but they are unable to produce them in communicative contexts. Unless the learners attain certain threshold level of proficiency, they are unlikely to convert language elements from „receptive form‟ to „productive form‟. The study identifies the need to incorporate appropriate strategies for development of productive skills into current teaching programmes.