Hello again! I hope everyone is doing well. These past two weeks have been amazing for my ASL journey. Reba and I have been able to hold conversations much longer than previously before and we are also practicing new vocabulary words and modifiers. Also, the amount of fingerspelling I have to do is much less than previously before and I can read Reba’s finger much faster than before. Reba also provided me with the opportunity to attend her American sign language course on Tuesday evenings for the school of continuing studies from 6:00 through 7:00. Faith, another member of the ASL SDLP program, was also at the meeting! Primarily, I served as a translator for Reba as she taught the new students to question words, colors, where they were from, names, and practiced greetings and fingerspelling with them. All in all, there were about 9 students.
I did not realize the difficulty of teaching more than one person sign language at a time! Gosh, it is very difficult! Much of the language requires the speaker to point to another person when asking a question or addressing the said person. However, on zoom, that part of the language cannot be expressed in a group meeting. If Reba points her finger at the computer screen, the question or addressing could be towards anyone of the members. I have been thinking about different ways to combat the issues I had noticed while teaching sign to a large group through zoom and I think one way that might be helpful is to have the professor sign the initials of whoever they are addressing beforehand. That way, specific individuals will know when they are being asked or told information. Additionally, I noticed that Reba often got very close to the camera, had it positioned in an unpractical position, and would constantly ask if she could be seen. I expressed this concern to Mary Catherine Raymond as she is a student in the course and she has been traveling to Reba’s home and helping figure out the best ways to teach such a language through the internet.
All in all, I am fairly happy with the rate and way in which my singing language abilities are developing. I can understand a lot more than at the start of the semester and Reba actually shared a deaf news source for me to watch and learn from. The news source is called https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdANpi-iksc&feature=youtu.be and is approximate 7 minutes long. The news anchor covers topics around the world in a summary ranging across all topics. It was really neat to watch someone sign for a larger audience, but at the normal playback speed, I did have trouble understanding the signer. It wasn’t until I slowed the speed down to .75 x playback speed that I was able to understand more of the signs signed. I am excited to watch more of those sign videos, but in the meantime, the reality TV show Deaf U has been both entertaining and educational in learning how other individuals to sign and which signs are colloquial and which are not.
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