Dan's SWML suggestion about pasting sign sentences from dictionaries

Dan Parvaz dparvaz at MAC.COM
Fri Jul 11 13:15:37 UTC 2003


>         Despite this, my understanding was that it was mostly the
> teachers who cut and pasted from the dictionary, and that the students
> were typing on their own.  Cecelia told me of at least one instance
> early on when a student couldn't find a sign in the dictionary and
> typed it in.  Can some of the Hodgin folks confirm this?  Stefan?

Talking to folks at Hodgin who were not involved in Cecelia's study,
but who interacted with the kids, I heard the kids were occasionally
making the same mistake. One example was boiling down complex
classifier predicates to a single (inaccurate) gloss so they could look
it up and type it in. As I recall the story, an instructor helped pick
the gloss.

Perhaps the Escuelita de Bluefields does things differently.

I haven't read Cecelia's dissertation, but I did attend her defense.
While I remember a lot of discussion on how using sign writing boosted
feelings of ownership of the writing process (writing in "my language")
and of making connections between signs and printed  symbols -- and I'm
not knocking that -- there wasn't a whole lot of talk about more
concrete outcomes. Does anyone (Cecelia, are you still here?) know if
that was addressed?

-Dan.



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