Humanities
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Item The use of scaffolding to support an EAL (English as an Additional Language) student in the UK(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Rajamuni, D.P.The purpose of this small scale action research was to find out how to support a newly arrived student in the UK with English as an Additional Language (EAL). The EAL support accelerates the speed of those students to make themselves prepared to follow the national curriculum. The subject of the research was a 13 year old Afghan Muslim girl who arrived in the UK without experiencing any form of formal education due to the political situation in Afghanistan. When investigating how to support the subject who represented many other newly arrived students whose first language is not English, scaffolding played a major part. The research was completed in seven cycles and each cycle “composed of four stage procedure such as the planning stage, the acting stage, the developing stage and the reflecting stage”( Mertler & Charles cited in Mertler, (2006:11). “Scaffolding is the instructional support that helps learners to accomplish tasks that might otherwise be too challenging” (Williams, 2005:59). The trial lessons were tailored according to a task-based approach. The support provided to the subject was considered as “contingent teaching “(Wood, 1988:81) because at the beginning of each task the subject was given the full support with a gradual removal of scaffolding towards the end of the task. The research proved that continuous support extended to the subject made her feel relaxed at the beginning of the tasks and a strong urge to continue the tasks even when the scaffolding was removed. Data was collected through observation, field notes and pupil’s responses. Data was analysed using “inductive process” (Mertler, 2006:124). Through the research, the importance of scaffolding and how the demands and the support could be balanced were perceived.Item Teaching language through literary texts(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Hettiarachchi, H.V.A.In Sri Lanka, the proficiency in the first language as well as a second language, specifically English language has become a necessity to achieve higher in the current job market. Though a proficiency in a language should be determined by the mastery of both productive and receptive skills, the society tend to evaluate an individual’s language skills mainly through their writing skill. Writing skills involve the accurate use of grammar, punctuation and spelling and therefore the improvement of the students’ writing skills has become a necessity in catering to the needs of the job market. Questioning the conventional language teaching methods, a class room action research was carried out with the participation of ten university students of lower intermediate level from the Department of Marketing Management of University of Kelaniya to investigate the necessity for the improvement of writing skills using modern approaches to language teaching. The objective of the action research was to assess the effectiveness of adopting the unconventional language-basedapproach rather than the use of conventional content-based-approach in teaching second language (ESL) learners. Unlike the content approach, the language-based-approach incorporates literature and language skills. Thus, the researcher was able to guide students on the specific literature piece based on their proficiency level, lexical and discourse knowledge (Lazar, 1993). The classroom action research was conducted in two circles. Each cycle included four stages, planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. The research data were collected by using observation, interview, documents, and photographs and tests.The data were analyzed during and after data collection. The results after the initial data collection showed the need for the improvement of basic grammatical skills such as the use of articles and prepositions and by the evaluation of the data collected at the end of the research, the researcher was able to conclude the effectiveness of the language approach in teaching language to ESL students.