Still Deaf!

ASL and CI together again!

I was very pleased to see this video for the first time. It was very worrisome to many people when Cochlear Implants first became widely used. There is always a fear that ASL will be rejected by parents and that Spoken English will be forced upon deaf children. This video shows that once Deaf, always Deaf. It also demonstrates that many parents will still teach ASL to their implanted child. I am so pleased to see all these children with CIs using ASL and loving it! Signed Languages are the ONLY natural languages for the deaf. CIs can be used as aids in the hearing world, but it will never replace ASL.

Extreme Blog Guilt

I’ve been gone for so long I’m embarrassed about it! How could I let this happen?!

Well, I’m sure I’ve been missing a lot of news in the Deaf World. My husband and I did spend a month in Arizona and when we returned I got a second job teaching ASL!

Now that you all know I’m a Sign Language teacher, I’m even more intimidated about posting my first VLOG! – which I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

Oh, well. I’ll just have to bite the bullet and do it.

Now, someday it’s going to come out that I’m not certified by the American Sign Language Teachers Association, nor do I have K-12 certification. How is it possible that I teach ASL then? I teach for a Charter School that supplements Home Schoolers’ programs. However, I am trained in the ethics of being a Sign Language teacher through my Interpreter Training Program and I also hold a Master’s Degree in Linguistics, so I’m fully qualified to teach at the level I am currently teaching. Furthermore, I’m improving every day now that I spend all my time thinking about how to teach concepts in ASL!

All in all, this has been a truly happy event in my life that will connect me more with the Deaf World and with my passion for Sign Language. I have also met a new friend here in Colorado who has several close Deaf friends and will take me to some local events in the future.

In other news, I’m trying to think of a new name for this blog! (For now) I’m no longer aspiring to be an interpreter. I simply want to continue learning and teaching ASL and socializing with Deaf people.

So…We’ll see what I can come up with in the days to come!

Old News, Perhaps Still Relevant?

(Image taken from barr productions via fookembug)

Okay, so this article, Hear No Evil, by Sara Minogue, was posted in the online magazine This, in the May-Jun 2005 issue, so it is definitely old news. I still think it poses a lot of interesting questions for interpreters.

Here is the opener:

Deaf since childhood, Bobby Suwarak grew up in isolation, able to understand no known language. Now charged with a crime, he has presented Nunavut’s court system with a problem. But the form of charades he uses to communicate is being used by deaf Inuit across the territory, leading one researcher to call for the court to recognize it too

Ignoring the very troublesome use of the word “charades” to refer to home-signs (which is a whole discussion in itself and surely burns a lot of people up) there is a lot in this article worth discussing, i.e. how to deal with a situation like this professionally and whether in this particular situation, the interpreters should all learn Inuit Sign Language, or should just try to teach everyone ASL. But while trying to address the question of whether to start teaching ASL in this part of Canada, the author makes a huge blunder! (Notice my emphasis below.)

[McDougall] urged the Government of Nunavut to create a court interpreter training program in ISL with the goal of producing impartial legal interpreters for deaf Inuit. But that never happened.

A reasonable person might ask: Does it even matter? In 2000, MacDougall estimated that there were 155 deaf people in Nunavut, of whom approximately 30 percent—perhaps 47 people—are untrained in ASL. A simpler, and cheaper, solution would be to train these people to use ASL. But how? By sending them to cities in southern Canada? Many Inuit still associate the South with medical emergencies and residential schools. Furthermore, ASL is based on the English language, and the dominant language in Nunavut is Inuktitut. In many small communities, 90 percent of people speak Inuktitut as a first language, and many speak limited English. Learning ASL would not only require deaf Inuit to first learn English, using it would effectively cut them off from their communities.  

What!? Don’t you just want to smack this author? How can a person write an article about sign language without doing at least a bit of research on the subject. Where are the fact checkers?

 Of course we all know that ASL in fact came from LSF (langue des signes française), not BSL. But aside from that, sign languages are not based on spoken or written languages in the first place. It is ludicrous to think that Inuit people would first have to learn English before they could learn ASL. Am I wrong? Yes, there is a continuum between more English based signing (PSE and all that) and ASL because the Deaf people in America are often bi-lingual and interact with English speakers on a daily basis. This is a modification of pure ASL due to language contact, but the language itself is in no way, shape, or form related to English. The bottom line is that ASL could be translated and taught people of any native language without teaching them English first.  

And finally, it is just plain irresponsible for a magazine to print fallacious material about a language that a communitty of people must constantly fight to defend. Media of the world, Deaf issues are controversial, do your homework before you write about them!

Baby Sign

This is how I spent my evening last night  – with a glass of white wine and sign language. I’m reading this book by Joseph Garcia, Sign With Your Baby because I’m considering teaching Baby Sign classes with a company that uses this book and video as a basis for their pedagogy. I’ve been selective about who I want to work for because some companies have invented modified signs for babies, instead of using the ASL signs. I don’t want to work for a company that uses made-up signs.

Anyway, I’m curious what people think about this trend of teaching sign language to hearing babies. The truth is, once they begin speaking they stop using signs and may even forget most or all of them in the end. However, there are many benefits to teaching sign language to babies – most importantly, that it helps parents decode their baby’s wishes during the “terrible twos.” In my opinion, spreading the word that learning sign language before speech is beneficial to a child and does not cause speech delay (a rumour that has worried many parents) helps the Deaf community of people who want to raise their children with ASL and may even want their children to use ASL in school instead of SEE II.

What do you think?

On Fingerspelling

Fingerspelling…

If you are hearing, you probably need improvement in this area. A few days ago I was reading this article  (appropriately titled, “What’s the Matter with Interpreters?!”) by A Deaf Pundit, in her blog The Deaf Edge. Below is the paragraph which addresses fingerspelling:

Why is it that so many interpreters cannot understand fingerspelling? Now, I understand my fingerspelling isn’t the best in the world, but seriously… Do I have to give a second per letter? How slow do I have to go? I don’t have the time to be s l o w in class or in a limited time situation. I just don’t understand. Maybe I’m too hard on others when it comes to fingerspelling, because the majority of the time, I know what the word is halfway through due to context. And I don’t need the person to slooooowly fingerspell it out. What does it have to take to improve hearing people’s receptive skills?

These are terrific points for every interpreter to think about. It is our job as interpreters to serve the deaf client efficiently and competently; especially in the adcademic setting, there isn’t time for either participant  to s l o w d o w n for the spelling of names and important vocabulary. Clarity does not require a snail’s pace.

So what can we do to improve?

The most obvious answer is PRACTICE! Read the comments to A Deaf Pundit’s post and, without feeling defensive, take a good, honest look at your fingerspelling skills. Are you a lazy speller? Do you put in the time to practice fingerspelling daily? I know I don’t. In fact, I’ve long been wondering what I can do to improve in this area. So today, I am pulling together a list of resources that can be found on the web.

Websites

Here are a couple of great websites for practicing receptive skills.

 Dr. Bill Vicars’ ASL Fingerspelling Tool – This first website tool is fun because you can controll the speed and quiz yourself. Put in a little time every day and see what happens. Can you make out any words at “Deaf” speed?

John A. Logan College IPP: Fingerspelling – This website is great for many reasons. Here, words are signed by several different people (who I believe might be deaf) at normal speed. They are also grouped into common letter patterns, from easier ones, to those more difficult to perceive. If you can learn to recognize common patterns of letters, you will more easily be able to guess the word from its shape. And this is a great place to remind you, as the website’s author Paula M. Willig does, that you should not be looking directly at the hand, but instead at or around the signer’s face. 

You can also also use this website to practice your production of fingerspelled words. Yes you need to practice that too. Daily. Learn to sign clearly, but quickly enough that your client isn’t w a i t i n g for the end of a word that they’ve already figured out – just as A Deaf Pundit says in the quote above. You need to get on to other important material in the lecture, before it’s too late!

These lists are great for practicing the transitions between groups of letters. Remeber when you learned how to write in cursive back in the third grade? The lists of words that you practiced were grouped in this same way so that you would become proficient at the transitions between various letter combinations. Dr. Bill Vicars also provides some lists of words to practice on his normal website, ASL University; however, he only provides one worksheet and it lists only 3 letter words. I imagine that he will be adding more in the future if he feels that there is a demand for them. These sites are great because, I don’t know about you, but I have often tried to create lists like this for myself. Now I can begin with these and add my own as I progress.  

Videos

There are also several fingerspelling videos out there, although I haven’t had a chance to use them myself since I’ve graduated from the IEP and no longer have access to free videos (more on that in a future post). Dr. Vicars recommends this video for beginners: Fingerspelling, expressive & receptive fluency a video guide (1992) by Groode, J. L., Holcomb, T., & Dawn Sign Press.  And for non-beginners, he recommends a book that you can use to make your own practice videos: Expressive and receptive fingerspelling for hearing adults (1988) by Guillory, LaVara M. Check out Dr. Vicars’ website for advice about how to do this. And, of course, you can use any lists of words to make your own videos.

What not to do.

I recommend reading all that Dr. Vicars has to say about fingerspelling on his website. He also has some great advice about how to practice, what fingerspelling should feel like, and what it should look like. Here he mentions something that I never realized:

I recommend that you don’t practice spelling license plates. Sometimes students like to spell license plates while driving or riding around in a car. I think this a counterproductive habit because it causes you to think letter by letter instead of whole words. It is much better to spell road signs like “exit” and “yield.” Again, you need to say in your mind the complete word, “yield,” not just “y” then “i” then “e.”

Oh no! I’ve certainly done that! So, if you must practice while riding in the car, practice road signs only, as those will be real words and place names.

One other video that was enlightening to me, is on the “Signing Stories Video” featured in Signing Naturally, Level 3. In story number four, “Some Thought on Fingerspelling,” Laurene Gallimore does an excellent job of explaining how children in signing households learn to read fingerspelling. She points out that children do not read or sign each individual letter. Instead, they notice the shape of the word and try to copy that. 

The Phonebook

Finally, and you may have heard this before, practice spelling names and addresses from the phonebook. What are the things that you will most likely have to spell? Names and addresses. And it won’t hurt you a bit to practice phone numbers, either. 

Remember, nobody ever said learning sign language was easy or that it was easy to become a sign language interpreter. Actually, people say this all the time. Perhaps if we can despell the myth that ASL is easy, there will be fewer incompetent interpreters in the field. That’s something to think about.