Greek Sign Language Certification or Marginalization?

[Klimis Antzakas]

(apologies  for
cross-posting)



 Dear fellow linguists,
 
We need your imminent support on the following matter:
The Greek Ministry of Education in a law on Special
Education (article 7, paragraph 3) assigns Greek Sign Language proficiency
Certification to the National Organization for the certification of
qualifications & vocational guidance, responsible for non-formal adult
education and technical, professional qualifications. We believe that this
decision is wrong: it places Greek sign language assessment on an inappropriate
basis and marginalizes it. 
Please read below for details. If you agree with our
cause and accept sign under it, please support by a positive reply until May 5th 2014 to the email address elliniki.noimatiki.glossa at gmail.com
You can also forward this email and place any comments
under the address below:
http://www.opengov.gr/ypepth/?p=1956


Sincerely, 
Dr Klimis Antzakas, Sign Language Researcher
Specialist in Sign Language, KEDDY, Ministry of
Education
Kiki Vasilaki, PhD Candidate
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Prof Eleni Efthimiou, Research Director at ILSP/ATHENA
RC
Natural Language analysis and processing
Dr Galini Sapountzaki, lecturer in the University of
Thessaly
Greek sign linguistics analysis and teaching methodology as a 1st and as a 2nd language
 
 
Greek Sign Language
Certification or Marginalization?
 
Greek Sign Language is the natural language of the
Greek deaf community in the sense that it is not artificially developed but
evolved like any other language to serve the communication needs of its users.
Recent linguistic research has shown that signed as well as spoken languages
are equally complex in grammar and vocabulary; both types of languages have the
necessary expressive power for  communicating thoughts, feelings, political, cultural and religious
attitudes; language acquisition by infants and children takes place
spontaneously and follows the same paths in both signed and spoken languages.
Even though a full handbook on the grammar of GSL is
yet to appear, GSL does possess all structural mechanisms expected. Grammatical
aspects of GSL that have already been studied are: a) its phonological system;
b) morphological structure of GSL signs c) use of topographic versus syntactic
signing space d) classifier predicate use and environments e) question f)
negation g) markers of tense, aspect, modality and agreement in the verb system
g) cross linguistic categories and their realization in GSL, among others.
Like any other natural language, GSL can be taught.
And, like in the case of spoken Greek language, assessment of proficiency
should be undertaken by academic institutions, by an equivalent of the Modern
Greek Language Teaching Centre as well as other institutions with relevant
experience and specialized linguists who as described in the paragraph above,
are currently available and active in the study of Greek Sign Language. 
Let us have a look on who is responsible for the
assessment of Modern Greek, then compare assessment criteria with those in GSL:
as a first language, attendance in a greek speaking school automatically grants
one with modern Greek language proficiency. As a second language, proficiency
levels, assessment and certification are undertaken by the Modern Greek
Language Teaching Centre of the National Kapodistrian University in Athens and
the Centre for the Greek Language in the University of Thessaloniki. Both
institutions are staffed with experts in theoretical and applied linguistics
and didactics. Recent legislation (Law 3699/2008 article 7 «Special Education
and Education of people with handicaps or special educational needs” and Law
4186/2013 article 20 «Restructure of Secondary Education», as well as article 7
of the new legislation on Special Education under discussion, lacking any scientific
basis, put assessment of Greek Sign Language on the exact same basis as of the
Braille writing system for the blind.
Paradoxically, Greek Sign Language has already, and
fairly so, been recognized as equal to spoken Greek by Law 3699/2008 (article 7,
paragraph1), the certifying organization will now be EOPPEP, the National
Organisation for the certification of qualifications & vocational guidance
(http://www.eoppep.gr/index.php/en/eoppep-en). The primary responsibility of
this organization as stated in their description is to “develop and implement
the National Accreditation & Certification System for non-formal
education, including initial and continuing vocational training and adult
education”, basically non-formal technical and professional qualifications in
collaboration with the Institute of Educational Policies. Neither of the two
assigned organizations have anything to do with language proficiency
assessment, in any language.
Assessing the task of GSL assessment and certification
to a domain that is not by definition to be made responsible for linguistic
assessment, zero experience and no experts on linguistic research and teaching
methodology in any language, simply makes no sense for any professional
involved in linguistics. Moreover, it is completely inappropriate to classify
Braille with GSL: GSL is a fully functional, natural language with a completely
different grammatical and syntactic structure, recognized as such not only by
European legislation but by those who got inspired for the new legislation
themselves; the Braille system is simply a tactile writing system of any given
spoken language. It is also worth remembering that already back in 1999 the
National Institute for the Deaf had published clear information that Greek Sign
Language should not be confused with closed codes such as Braille or Morse.
Fifteen years later, the same area of Special Education is to bring the myths
of the previous century back with no arguments.
We believe that proficiency assessment by
organizations that are unrelated to linguistic assessment and teaching in terms
of responsibilities, structure or experts is a global innovation on the Greek
part. We are asking from the Ministry of Education to assign this matter to
institutions and academic departments that are related to linguistic research,
teaching and assessment. 
 
Sincerely, 
(names
to be copied here)
 
 


 
 
Dr. Klimis Antzakas 
Sign Language Linguist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20140428/195d3798/attachment.htm>