Hi Val and everyone else!

I'm mainly interested in native signers (=deaf, codas...) of all ages, and also in hearing people who use SW to learn SL.  Therefore I could do my research in co-ordination with schools for the deaf children, with any group of researcher ( if there is also a deaf member in the group, or several :) ), with deaf ministries, SL learning groups for the hearing, interpreter schools.... and so on.  Since I'm not quite sure of the amount of possible information, I need to try to check out all the possibillities, and then decide, how exatly I will define the target group. 

One possible way to do this is to do some kind of  basic review over this  field  (SW in the world) and then interview more precisely a group or two. (That kind of group could be a deaf school, so that both the deaf children and their (hearing) teachers can be interviewed. I'd like to know about their level of literacy, about the situations they use SW and about their opinnions about it.  I could also ask about the method(s) of teaching SW, it's successfulness, results etc.) In a general review I could mention all the occasions and groups where SW is being used, different kind of products made with it etc.

As you may see I have not decided the exact way of doing this, since it depens on the "material" available. On the other hand, I can't do a very extensive investigation due to my human limits, so.. I just have to check out the possibillities and then specify my targets and methods.

 

About Parkhursts, they will probably read this message themselves, but do please tell my warm greetings to them! I'm looking forward seeing them next summer!

 

Nitsu:)