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From:
cmf Date: Fri Nov 12, 1999 10:17 pm Subject: Re: A question... | ||||||||
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How much time does it take to write a word/sign? I have the opportunity to observe some elementary aged DHH students 'writing' both words and signs as we progress in our SignWriting Literacy project. Writing signs is new for these students (new for me too!) so there will understandably be more time and effort required initially, particularly with handwritten SignWriting. I've done some dictating of English word 'spelling' to some of these same students as per their request. Depending on their individual strategies to 'hold in memory' fingerspelled dictation, they might write one letter at a time (most common), word syllables, or the whole word at once. A classroom task of copying English notes from a black board presents similar 'time and effort' challenges to some students. We have been 'writing' signs using a few techniques to become more familiar with reading and writing the parts of signs ie.copying and tracing them from printed materials (SignWriting books, flash cards, SW printed dictionary) using the SignWriter computer program to 'search' for signs in the SW dictionary and to generate or 'write' sign names and other new signs. One student who generally uses that one English letter at a time strategy surprised me with her 'writing' of a single sign.....'hot'. She was using one of the SW books to copy the sign onto a dry erase easel. She wrote (from memory) the facial features of the sign including the eyebrow and mouth manual markers and the handshape. She returned to the material to copy the remaining portion of the sign...the twisting movement symbol. Did this all take time...yes, but it was what she stored in memory before she referred to her source that impressed me. Another student wanted to write (using SW) his plans to play football. He was using the SW printed dictionary to locate the lexical items he needed for his sentence. He was not able to locate the printed SW sign for football (wasn't sure of the English spelling or maybe just did not want to extend any more time to the search). He looked at his hands and articulated the sign, 'football'. As he generated the written symbols he did seek out accuracy confirmation from me. He wrote the handshapes, the palm orientation shading, position of the two hands and the contact symbol, the asteric or 'star' symbol as we describe it. We took this opportunity to learn one more contact symbol...added two parallel lines to the 'star' for the inter-locking of the open hands. What continues to 'inspire' me, if you will, is the genuine smiles that emerged as this 10 year old 'wrote' about his most favorite past time (football) in his language of signs. Did this all take time, yes. Did he complain about how long it took? No....not yet! Cecilia | ||||||||
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