http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/271 Sun, 05 Apr 2026 20:10:21 GMT 2026-04-05T20:10:21Z http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2208 Teachers’ use of hybrid language in the esl grammar teaching classroom: situations and students’ attitudes Edirisinghe, E.M.H.J.; Edirisinghe, E.M.D.H. The objective of this descriptive study is to look into the situations and attitudes of the undergraduates towards the teachers’ use of Hybrid Language (HL) in the ESL grammar teaching classroom. HL is identified as one common practice used by the language teachers to tackle the communication difficulties while teaching English. It seems that the students bear different attitudes towards this practice. The present study employed grammar teaching classroom observations to identify the situations, student attitude questionnaires and also a focus group discussion with ten randomly selected students to investigate the students’ attitudes towards the teachers’ use of HL during the lessons. The findings reveal that the majority of the learners bear positive attitudes towards teachers' HL practices; however, there are also a very few negative sentiments. Based on the findings, it is concluded that the use of HL judiciously act as a facilitative tool for both teachers and students in the language teaching-learning process. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2208 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2207 Socio-demographic characteristics of recreational activities: evidence from eastern province. Hashan Rathnayaka; Pramuditha Geethanjana; Udani Gamage; Hiranya Karunarathne; Ruwan Jayathilaka Socio-demographic characteristics of individuals in Eastern province of Sri Lanka are an important area to study to formulate better policies for businessmen who are interested in recreational activities in the country. The study used annual sample of 21,756 households that covered all 25 districts in the country, based on data from the provincial and district level. This research suggests to investigate the determinantsof socio-demographic characteristics of households on spending on recreational activities. As such, itutilized the methods of descriptive statistics chi-squaredistribution to derive quantitative data and information in a meaningful way. The study adopted cross-sectional statistics to create distribution pyramids and diagrams to highlight the socio-demographic characteristics of people in the Eastern province. The results and finding revealed that most spending on recreation activities are done by the Male Headed households (MHHs) than the Female Headed households (FHHs) in the Eastern province. It is respectively 78.63 percent and 21.37 percent. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2207 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2205 Quality analysis of the water supplied for public from collector wells Thilakshan Sandrasegaran; Ranganathan Kapilan The study was aimed to determine the water quality of the collector wells in the Vallipuram area of the northern Sri Lanka and to determine the suitability of the water for domestic utilization. Because of the infection of well water by iron and coliform bacterial species in 2016, public water supply was temporarily stopped and after a complete sterilization and clean-up process using chlorination and integrated control methods only, the water supply restarted after six months. Since then, there had been no steps made to check the quality of the drinking water supplied to the public from these wells. Water samples (36) were collected from the four major water supply collector wells in both top, middle and bottom randomly in triplicates during the rainy season of 2018. Samples were analyzed for pH, Electrical conductivity (EC), Turbidity, Total iron, Colour, Coliform test and Bio chemical tests such as Indole production test, Methyl red test,Voges-Proskauer test, Oxidase test and Catalase test. The results were compared with WHO and SLS standards and it was concluded that all the water samples from the collector wells tested, did not have any contaminants thus the quality of those samples was good for drinking.Based on the biochemical and molecular analysis,the bacterial species presented in some water samples was identified as Bacillus thuringiensis. Exactly similar conclusion was reached when the same research study was repeated after 6 months from the earlier study and the values obtained for the physico chemical factors tested were not significantly different with that of the previous study. Therefore, water in all the collector wells could be used for domestic and sustainable agricultural purposes continuously in the future too. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2205 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2204 Purification and characterization of bacteriocin produced by Lactobacillus reuteri af182723, a strain isolated from traditionally prepared curd Keerthini Srikantha; Kapilan Ranganathan; Vasantharuba Seevaratnam Bacteriocins are antimicrobial peptides produced by diverse bacterial species that inhibit or kill other microorganisms. In the food industry bacteriocins have potential application as preservative. The bacteriocin obtained from fermented broth in a crude form that may contain lactic acid, acetic acid, H2O2 and other antimicrobial substances. Therefore, the objectives of the study were to purify the bacteriocin and to reveal the possibility of purified compound as biopreservative. Crude bacteriocin was produced by Lactobacillus reuteri AF182723 isolated from traditionally prepared curd in liquid fermentation system. When the crude bacteriocin was purified by sequential three step procedure involving ammonium sulfate fractional precipitation, cation exchange (SP Sepharose) chromatography and size exclusion (Sephadex G-100 column) chromatography, the specific activity (AU/mg) of the bacteriocin increased in each step of purification and it reached 6349.2AU/mg finally from 262.3 AU/mg with the purification fold of 24.206. When the purified bacteriocin was subjected to different temperature and pH treatments, it found stable over wide temperature range (45ºC - 75ºC) and pH range (3-7). When exposed to different enzymes, the purified bacteriocin showed resistant to catalase and amylase enzymes, but showed significantly higher sensitive to pepsin and proteinase K indicating that the antimicrobial substance was proteinaceous in nature. This study concluded that bacteriocin produced by Lactobacillus reuteri AF182723 could be used as a potential food biopreservative. Further safety studies should be done to recommend this potential bacteriocin as food biopreservative. Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2204 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z