Medicine
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This repository contains the published and unpublished research of the Faculty of Medicine by the staff members of the faculty
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Item Identifying Sri Lankan mothers’ lived experiences of supporting a child with dyslexia: A pilot study(University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2022) Yasora, C.A.W.H.; Perera, B.M.R.K.Background: Dyslexia is a pattern of learning difficulties characterized by problems with accurate or fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities. Having a reading difficulty can affect children’s academic achievements as well as social success. Mothers play an important role in speech and language therapy programs especially when speech and language therapists provide reading intervention for children with dyslexia. Objectives: The main purpose of the study was to identify Sri Lankan mothers’ lived experience of supporting children with dyslexia. Methods: This research was a qualitative study. Private clinics in Sri Lanka which have clients with dyslexia-related caseloads were taken as the study settings for this study. Ten parents of 7 – 10-year-old children with dyslexia were the study population. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using an interview guide which consisted of 15 questions. Data collection interviews were conducted via telephone. Data received from the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Three main themes have emerged from the transcripts of the interviews which are awareness about dyslexia, experience mothers face when teaching children with dyslexia, and expectations of mothers. Under the main 3 themes, eight subthemes have emerged from the collected data. Findings have shown mothers' lack of awareness and knowledge about dyslexia, the challenges, and strengths mothers face during teaching before and during the Covid 19 pandemic, and also mothers' expectations for their children. Conclusion: The current study revealed the experience mothers face when teaching a child with dyslexia. Besides, this study provides insights and information for speech and language therapists to support mothers who have children with dyslexia.Item Acquisition of Reading Skills of Sinhala Vowel Modifiers among Pre-School Leavers and Grade One Leavers in Gampaha District(Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, 2014) Perera, B.M.R.K.; Williams, C.; Wijeratne, L.Vowel modifiers are a very important feature in Sinhala written language, which are used with consonants to make different sound syllables. They always appear in word medial or final positions to represent the associated vowel sounds; they can be used before, after, on top, bottom or around the consonant (Dissanayaka, 2005). The main objective of this study was to identify teachers’ expectations in children’s performance, in terms of reading vowel modifiers at pre-school level and grade one leaver level, as well as to identify the actual performance level of children. A quantitative cross-sectional exploratory study was done in four selected schools in the Gampaha District. The sample comprised of forty pre- school leaver level students, eighty grade one leaver level students, eight pre-school teachers and eight grade one teachers. Teachers’ data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and a record sheet to mark the expected level for the whole class. Children were tested individually using a Sound Blending and Meaning Picture Card Test (SBMPT) with the same record sheet to mark their performance. The results reveal that teachers’ expected level of children’s performance in reading vowel modifiers were 0% and 100% for preschool and grade one leaver levels respectively. Average scores for pre- school children on SBMPT was 0% and most of the grade one children were able to obtain 100% for vowel modifier / ɑ:/ at syllable level. The least performance was noticed with /o: / at 88%. Acquisition of the skills in reading vowel modifiers was not associated with gender, but was significantly associated with age. i.e., when age of the children increased the percentage of vowel modifiers they acquire also increased proportionally. In conclusion, it was found that most of the pre-school leavers have not acquired reading skills in terms of vowel modifiers and the majority of the grade one leavers have mastered most of the vowel modifiers.