• Our goal is to teach the Sinhalese Language, the Sri Lankan heritage, culture, and traditions to the younger generations to proudly represent as a Sri Lankan in multicultural Australia. This platform is filled with fun and engaging activities that will make learning Sinhala enjoyable. Enroll today and start your journey of learning this beautiful language!

    Most Venerable Wattegama Dhammawasa Thero

    The Principal – Yasodhara Sinhala School

        Learning Sinhala is extremely important for those Children with a Sri Lankan descendance who are living outside Sri Lanka. The lack of Sinhala verbal communication skills of children has created a gap among parents, grandparents and other extended family members leading to a negative impact to families.
        Over the last thirty years, I have seen the mammoth effort taken by Sri Lankans living in Brisbane to teach their mother tongue to their children. Yasodhara Sinhala School (YSS) was established in 2008 to support with this purpose and over the years the school has contributed in great terms to teach Sinhala Language to Children living in Brisbane.
        I am please to see that YSS is progressing well with modern language teaching methods with the use of state of the art technology . Helabasa is the latest extension to the curriculum in YSS which enables children to practice verbal Sinhala skills. I hope this is an important milestone in YSS journey towards producing more and more Sinhala speakers in Australian community in future.

    Dr. Vimukthi Jayawardene

    Project Manager /Grant recipient – Helabasa e-Learning platform

        There is a growing need among Sri Lankan expatriates in Australia to teach Sinhala language to their children as a second language. Over the years, I have observed that young children who learn Sinhala as a second language struggle to speak Sinhala while they are good at comprehending Sinhala through reading and listening. Helabasa is an e-learning tool designed to promote the speaking aspect of Sinhala.
        This tool is designed in a way that children acquire Sinhala through a natural subconscious process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules in Sinhala. This tool has the voice recognition capability and hence they can repeatedly practice what is said to them and get a feedback from the tool on what is correct and what is not correct. Also there are many interactive features such as multimedia based quizzes and games so that the children will receive a more joyful learning experience.
        This project was funded by the community languages multicultural grants - Stream Two -4-FSBBLS2. I would like to thank Dr. Kumara Dissanayake and Mr. Udaya Madugalle for their service in this project as Sinhala language consultants to design the curriculum and lessons. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to all teachers at Yasodhara Sinhala School who worked as lesson developers in this project. Finally, I appreciate the volunteer service provided by Mr. Ajith Wikramarathne and Prasanna Gamalath in handling the project related finance and administration tasks, and Mr Pasan Eeriagama for volunteering with me in developing the technical platform.

    Project Team Members

    • Dr. Kumara Dissanayake- Sinhala Language consultant
    • Mr. Udaya Madugalle – Sinhala Language consultant