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From:
James Womack Date: Wed Mar 15, 2000 10:06 am Subject: Re: SignWriting as a gateway? | |
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Joe Martin wrote: > > This thread arose out of our desire to see SW used as a bridge to English. > How can this happen if we insist on forcing teachers to make a choice of > one or the other, by treating SW and English as incompatible? There need > not be a conflict between the two. I don't think this is teh intent or even desired. If I understand most of the folks right, we want a tool specific to ASL to establish L1 in Deaf kids. Then once L1 is mastered in not just natural use but written form as well, begin establishing an L2. As to how this somehow gets mis-directed and miscontrued as an ASL vs. English thing, i have never understood. You see, this is not new. In my experience, every time the Deaf suggest the L1 to L2 approach (and the idea goves waaaaaaayyyy back), it gets beaten up on as desiring to discard English for ASL, forcing hearing teachers into this or that, or worse. Oddly, it was this behavior that caused me to drop my own legendary opposition to Sw and welcome in with open arms. Now, that's a story I might tell some day. > My linguistics classes included examples of many different languages; > Spanish, French, and others, including English. My interpreter regularly > signed them all. This I'd like to see. My Gallaudet experience was that the Deaf learned foreign languages better than they did English because the focus was on the reading and writing of it and nothing on speech. I suspect privately, that since many languages appear backwards when written verbatinm into English, this fir teh way ASL is signed and ASL inadverently acted as a L1 reinforcer to learning the foreign languages. No one ever really reserached this and Inever pursued it either. But it was noticed at Gallaudet because the foreign language teachers brought it up from time to time. But interpret for these classes? Somehow, it seems detrimental and even odd because regular clases put stress on speaking and discoursing in those languages, not the heavy read and writing focus that was done at Gallaudet. > For those of you who insist that English cannot be > signed, how do you explain this? > How can a teacher communicate English to a deaf student? In written English form. You see, theproblem with English glossing of ASL is you tell the kids this is Englsh (a grammatically correct English sentence), and this is ASL (English in ASL word order). All the kid sees is English words. But when as at Gallaudet, you see the direct distinction between the two (how they are spelled, the grammar differences, the punctuation, etc (especially in say Russian cryllic), the Deaf's mind begins to compare and contrast between what is known and what is new. So a kid seeing Sw and written English is accorded the same opportunity that a hearing person would have learning to read and write a foreign language. > Furthermore, if we had transcribed those classes, we would have to write > in SW; we would have French, signed, and written in SW; Spanish, signed, > and written in SW; ASL, signed, and written in SW, and English, signed, > and written in SW. Don't complicate the issue. The point is to establish a bona fide L1 in Deaf kids so the L2 (spoken language) can be taught with a higher level of literacy mastery. I am sure one can haul Sw to the areas you're discussing but I think most of us share a concern with rasing the literacy competence of Deaf children. -- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Squirrel wisdom: (\__/) .~ ~.)) /O O ./ .' {O__, \ { Photons have mass!? I didn't know / . . ) they were Catholic! |-| '-' \ ( _( )_.' https://www.education.eku.edu/Sed/faculty/womack/default.htm |
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