Hello everyone,
My ASL learning goal for April was to focus on expanding my ASL vocabulary. However, with things like the final cultural presentation, podcast, inflectional and derivational morphemes etc. being discussed in SDLC 105, some of those conversations carried over to my language sessions too. So, we ended up touching on a wide variety of things that collectively nuanced my understanding of ASL.
Learning new ASL vocabulary turned out to be much harder than anticipated because there was simply so much to learn! By the time we had covered vocabulary related to academia, feelings, greetings, and weather, I found myself really struggling to memorize them. The patterns and mnemonics that I had previously used to memorize alphabets, animals, colours etc. were no longer a useful method while memorizing hundreds of new ASL vocabulary. So, my language partner and I created “quiz-times” in every session where she would randomly quiz me on the ASL vocabulary. I have never learnt well with flash cards. However, being quizzed orally was surprisingly helpful and it helped me retain a lot of new signs. Next, we started a new method of assessment where my language partner would give me sentences that used all the vocabulary that we had learnt since Day 1. This was really intimidating because it forced me to reflect on everything we had learnt. There was so much I remembered, but also so much I had forgotten! By far, this was the most effective learning method for me because it tied up everything from fingerspelling to signs and sentence structures. It was also great for synthesizing new sentences and building confidence.
Another very interesting thing that came up during our vocabulary sessions was regional differences in ASL across the US. We were following the Barron’s American Sign Language textbook in our sessions. Occasionally, we would come across a sign and my language partner would say “Hmm, I have never seen that sign before. Here’s how I sign it and here’s how I have seen other people sign it”. To me, this was so odd in the beginning because I already knew that sign language varies across the world. As it turns out, American sign language also has regional variations within the US. So, there were a lot of words where my language partner would give me 4-5 sign options to choose from. I really liked having the flexibility to choose between signs, but I also kept on thinking whether that would create confusion when people from different regions talked to each other. My language partner confirmed that there are situations where that happens, but it is not significant enough to actually impede conversation.
Towards the end of our April lessons, we shifted focus to our final research presentation. My friend Nibras and I had chosen a very heavy topic for our research- The Politics of Deaf Identity: What does it mean to be Deaf in today’s socio-political climate? Given the incredibly loaded and sensitive nature of this topic, Nibras and I spent a lot of time asking our language partner’s opinion on it. Particularly, our language partner’s full-time job is to help Deaf kids adjust into the Public schools in Richmond. So, we were able to get some incredibly valuable insights into her work. She shared how young kids do not like wearing cochlear implants because it is uncomfortable, but then hearing parents want their Deaf kids to wear the implants. So, this creates a very tense situation between the school and the parents. Being able to hear these perspectives made me and Nibras realize the gravity and intricacies of the topic we were presenting on. Finally, we ended our ASL journey this semester by recording our final podcast. We were so excited to talk about everything we had learnt this semester that the estimated 15 minutes podcast time was not enough. We reflected on the early challenges, milestones, and our future plans for learning ASL. Particularly, we hoped that anyone watching the podcast could see our enthusiasm for the language. The podcast was a nice way to wrap everything up and bid goodbye to our language partner. Nibras and I made some great memories in this class and we are so incredibly grateful to the University of Richmond and Global Studio for making this class possible. Thank you everyone for being a part of my ASL journey!
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