This is the second post documenting my ASL journey and there have been some major changes to our learning strategies since the last post. As mentioned previously, we were initially a group of five meeting twice a week but now we have decided to split up into two separate groups as we continue learning ASL for the rest of the semester. In one group we have me, Susmita, and Ms. Kaye while on the other there is Eli and Ms. Reba. In the beginning weeks we realized that having people at different proficiency levels within the same class period hampered everyone’s learning. Susmita and I were complete beginners who needed to learn the fundamentals. Eli was already an intermediate speaker who wanted to further perfect his trade. Thus, spending 2.5 hours every week going over finger spelling and how to count was not the best utilization of Eli’s time. Furthermore, from a teacher’s perspective this also made classes more difficult to plan as the teaching material was inconsistent in its level of difficulty because it needed to be catered towards essentially two separate groups.
Additionally, Susmita and I both realized that we felt much more comfortable working with Ms. Kaye. As someone who is both younger and bi-lingual, we found it easier to connect to and communicate with her. This setup also eliminated some of the other technical difficulties we had to face previously but it was still not an easy decision to make. Susmita and I both initially felt very guilty to be putting in a request to work with a new language partner. What made it worse was that we were essentially replacing our Deaf instructor with a hearing person to teach us ASL. Deaf and hard of hearing people face many obstacles and implicit discrimination in the workplace, historically even in matters relating directly to their own language and culture which is what weighed heavily on our minds. Ultimately, we chose to communicate our feelings to Dr. Soloway who promptly approved the switch. This decision was not easy but given the circumstances, I believe it was the appropriate one.
Having covered some of the more basic concepts, our new strategy under Ms. Kaye was to rapidly expand our working ASL directory by blitzing through the Barron’s textbook and supplementing that learning with flash cards and little games to help us remember all this new information. For example, we learned about animals and colors. Once we had gone over the word and sign, Ms. Kaye would play a game with us in which she would hold up a flash card with a color or name of an animal written down and Susmita and I would have to show her the respective signs. Our small group of three made the learning environment feel fun, personal, and safe. As Susmita and I are friends, we compete with and push each other to become better self-directed learners. We would often keep score in these games and the winner would have bragging rights. This worked as an extra source of motivation as I came to every class with a determination and hunger to grow. Our textbook also provides a good framework for steady progression in ASL by exploring different themes relating to everyday usage. In the next few weeks, we will be exploring topics such as courtesy phrases, directional verbs, relationships, timelines, occupations, sports, and more. I am particularly excited to learn more about the sports related signs as this is an area I was interested to explore coming in, and one I also detailed in my language learning plan from the beginning of the semester. I have started to feel a little more comfortable with my target language. Now, the key is to practice, practice, and practice even more.
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