Dear Valerie, dear members of the list,
The presentation on SW, I did in February to the hearing and deaf
professionnal (teachers, speech therapist, psychologist,
"psychomotricien" (sorry I don't know this word in english), ...) that
work in the school of the deaf in Fribourg (Switzerland) seem to raise
up lots of interest. They asked several very interesting questions....
some of which I already shared with you all. As I do not have any
experience in using SW... I need some more help to answer their other
questions.
First of all, they'd love to know more about the dictionnary possibility
as the think it would be great for the children to have a way to make
links between french and swiss french SL.... But, as I never used it...
I can't tell them more about it ! Is their a fench version of the
dictionnary ? If yes can you tell me again how to procced to have a look
at it !
Other questions...
They would like to know if SW can be used (and subsequently be usefull)
with hard of hearing children ? Do any of you have experience in that
particular field. I have to precise here that there are two kinds of
classes in the deaf school in Fribourg... classes for the deaf in which
SL is used for communication, and hard of hearing classes where LS is
mostly left aside and where the oral language is predominant. Do any of
you have experience with hard of hearinf children using SW... does it
also interest them... I guess the first question is... do they use SL as
a language... and if the answer if yes... then logically SW will be
usefull for them too (that's my guess but I'd love to hear about you all
!)
Another question asked is to know the goal of using SW with deaf
children. I don't need to be convinced myself but... how could I clearly
explain them the goals of a writing system ? Can anyone help me arguing
about it ?
one of the therapist (psychomotricienne) notices (she's left handed)
that this system might be confusing for left hand dominants and also for
the children who don't have a clear representation of their body (shema
corporel in french)... or even for people that do have lateralization
problems... Her question in link with the previous elements is: What are
the competence & knowledge needed for a child to access SW. The team
imagine that a child needs to have quite a good level in SL before he
can use (read and write) SW.
They also ask whether the professionnal have to practice SW quite a
while before using it with children. What is your experience in that
field ? How did the one of you that started introducing SW to your deaf
children ? Did you all know SW before ? How long did it take for you to
become "fluent" with the system?
The team also wanted to know which are the possibilities for them to
learn to use SW. I know about the lessons online and will tell them
about it... What about the different books ? Is it possible to become a
few manuals to learn to write by hand... How do I have to procced to get
some ?
The team finally said they would be really interested in getting in
touch with other teacher that have experience in using SW with deaf
Children... Anyone in France (as it would be simpler in french) that can
tell us more about their experience ? (as it would be simpler in
french)*. Any other teacher who could share with us (me and the team ).
I told them about the experience in Bluefields... and they'd love to
know more about it... is there any way they could get in touch with the
different teams ?
I guess I should suggest tham to join the list (I'll do it ) but it
won't solve the language problem !
* Is there any way to have the address and phone number of Toulouse
school of the deaf... to get in touch with them ?
I think that's it for tonight... I need some rest... and will write some
more another day !
I'm looking forward to reading all your answer
Anny
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