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From:
Karl Rosenberg Date: Mon Sep 10, 2001 9:54 pm Subject: Karl is searching | ||||||||||||
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I have so enjoyed wading into SignWriting. I hope that I donıt drown trying to learn several swimming strokes simultaneously. This is where I am coming from; Iım an artist, graphic designer, web designer who has diminishing hearing abilities (HH). My HH situation has pushed me into often using the computer as a tool to communicate. I have been given a wonderful opportunity by a technical school. The school views my design skills and HH condition as assets; my mission, conduct computer classes for the D/HH. The objective is to introduce the computer as an English communications tool to be taken into the oral workplace environment. The course has been set up for students of the upper tier who can type and write high school level English. The textbooks and teaching manuals to upgrade grammar skills have been identified for this level. I have a request for your and fellow members of the SignWriting List. I need teaching manuals in English to help me help the D/HH of the lower tier who have had difficulty bridging the world of topic-comment syntax (ASL) to subject-verb-object (English). From the SW files of Petra Horn Rose, Lucinda OıGrady Batch , and Karen van Hoek I can experience the pleasure of first writing in sign, and from that base improving ASL grammar. However, I and the lower level students have been thrown into the water and told "go swim". I can type a sentence in English-followed by the same in Sutton font with a little pasting of signed words. The result is a strange brew. Are there basic step by step approaches that take sentences in ASL, like the Grammar File in SignWriter 4.4, and help the student understand the basic structure he/she uses with ASL, and then guides him/her into reconstructing the native language into English? This is my search. When we announce introducing lower tier students to computers, we envision workers with their palm computers, being able to type and exchange simple messages. The business world has been undergoing a rapid communication revolution, where the acceptance of first e-mail and now palm messengers, has subtly increased the acceptance of captioning into everyoneıs world. The time will not be too distant when voice recognition software incorporated into a palm messenger will enable a D/HH communicator to see what someone next to him is saying. We want to improve writing skills to be up and ready for this evolution. If students gain elementary literacy in both SignWriting and English then internet communications will be indeed be empowering. I will appreciate teaching manual recommendations-Karl. | ||||||||||||
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