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From:
Stefan Woehrmann2 Date: Thu Nov 8, 2001 11:32 pm Subject: Re: Spain and Germany | ||||||||
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Hi Steve, Dianne and everybody, yes - thank you so much for your wonderfull visit. I am still busy to look through all your wonderfull teaching materials and SW- files . I feel very greatfull and feel more secure now about some spelling issues. I posted a short report with some impressions on my website - even if you cannot read or understand German you will understand that we have had a great time ! https://www.gebaerdenschrift.de/new/new001.htm Have a super day Stefan ;-) ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve and Dianne Parkhurst To: Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 7:37 PM Subject: Spain and Germany > Hi, everybody! > > As you may have gathered from a previous message or two, my wife Dianne and > I were able to visit Stefan and his family in Germany a few days ago. We > were in southern Germany for a conference, so on the weekend we had a brief > window of time to travel up north to see Stefan. Germany is gorgeous this > time of year with the leaves turning color and lots of green fields (our > part of Spain is rather brown most of the year). We discovered something > called a "Happy Weekender Pass" that allowed all three of us (our > three-year-old son was also with us) to travel anywhere in Germany on local > trains for only about $20. Of course to get there we had to change trains 5 > or 6 times, but it worked. > > We spent all Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning talking about SW. For > those who are wondering, yes, Stefan has as much endless energy and > enthusiasm in person as he seems to have in his e-mails. We swapped a lot of > files and he showed me how he makes all those wonderful animations. One > added bonus was getting to see the second half of the BBC presentation on > Bluefields while staying in the hotel there (it was even in English!). > > Stefan and I spent quite a bit of time discussing what needs to be written > in a text. As you may have noticed in his stories he includes a lot of > facial expressions--Valerie does it as well. We, on the other hand, tend to > leave off the facial expression from most of the signs. Here in Europe > signers do a lot more mouthing the words than in America--and perhaps > because of the long historical oralistic methods of Deaf education, Germany > seems to have more mouthing than Spain. So the question is, how much is > necessary to write? > > Stefan and I made the distinction between "informed" and "uninformed" > readers. Here in Spain we primarily teach Deaf adults who are native > signers. We assume that they know what they are signing and will > automatically fill in the appropriate facial expressions. Stefan is using SW > with children who do not necessarily know the SL. For us it is important to > be able to read fluently with speed. The fewer symbols you have, the faster > you can read. Of course there has to be a balance; if you leave out too > much, it's hard to understand the text; if you put in too many details, it > slows you down and you lose the flow and the context. We do put in any > facial expressions that are grammatical: biting the lip ("F") or teeth bared > as an intensifier; or eyebrows as intensifier or topic, etc. > > Also, as you may know, we use brackets here to represent when whole phrases > use the same facial expression. So rather than have to read a head shaking > over every sign in the whole phrase, we put a beginning bracket with the > head shaking and then a close bracket at the end. Cognitively this is a bit > more accurate anyway--negation is often an element of the phrase, not the > individual sign. I'll attach here part of a text with some examples in > Spanish SL. > > I was really impressed with Stefan's system of writing mouth movements. > Again this is only useful for certain audiences. Deaf adults don't need (or > want) all that detail on how to vocalize the words, but Stefan showed me how > well it works with his kids in the school. Different methods apply to > different audiences. > > Anyway, we had a great time talking about these things. I am really glad we > were able to get together, even if it was for just a short time. > > Have a super day! > Steve :-) > ---------------------- > > | ||||||||
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