writing by hand - not so easy ? -

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
November 25, 2003

Dear SW List members -
Please excuse how busy I have been lately...

Stefan Woehrmann wrote:
> In the meantime I decided to risk some time in order to study writing
> SW by
> hand in my class.It seems to become a problem. After years of
> experience in reading SW and
> typing documents with the SW44 program using the German dictionary  -
> my
> students feel not secure to write long sentences in GebaerdenSchrift by
> hand. Perhaps it is me who gets nervous that we "produce" not enough
> (???)
> outcome ... or the students are frustrated because it is so easy to
> type
> with  SW44 - if the dictionary is available ;-))


Val answers:
Smile...May I ask Stefan....How many documents do you write by hand in
the German spoken language, daily, yourself? In today's world, most
people only write short sentences daily in their spoken language. Any
longer documents are typed by computer too...So is it so surprising
that your students got dependent on typing SignWriting?

I will never forget, when Lucinda O'Grady Batch, a Deaf teacher, was
teaching SignWriting on video, she mentioned that she always wrote by
hand because the computer program came after she learned SignWriting
and since she already wrote by hand she had never gotten used to typing
by computer...

When we distributed that video in the Lessons in SignWriting video
series, other people expressed surprise that Lucinda didn't prefer to
type...and I had to point out, that it is a matter of experience...if
Lucinda had never typed before, why would you assume it was
easier?..smile...

So it is the opposite with your students, Stefan...They need a little
time to practice...what is the rush? And your attached document looks
wonderful!




-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: hand_sw_mb.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 29361 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20031125/5a71f960/attachment.gif>