AW: Analyzing SignWriting based on writer profile

[Charles Butler]

As one of the handful who were certified as teachers of Sign Writing back in the 1980s, I appreciate all the work that all of the various researchers on this list are going through.

I can see the helpfulness of having some sort of basic competency in SW as part of any schooling program in the system.  Dance Writing has been taught at Oberlin Conservatory, and I'm sure that those students have to prove that they are competent in order to have credit on their transcripts.

What does or could or should one test:

1) Ability to transcribe each handshape, movement, etc. in the sign language in question.
2) Ability to reproduce what has been written into a given sign language.
3) Ability to read a narrative in SW and reproduce it for a third party.  This competency does not necessarily require one knowing the sign language.  This is more like knowing the International Phonetic Alphabet and being able to pronounce a text written in it, even if it is not your native tongue.  I was taught to reproduce Circassian from written text, though I do not know the language at all.

If one is obtaining a teaching certificate, one must be able to teach all of the above, through demonstration.  I feel fortunate that over the years I have taught people both in person, and through pen pal, and was able to be sufficiently well versed to be able to read Libras upon arrival in Brazil, though I did not know the language.

I have worked as an editor in SW, which requires knowing the system well enough to tell when something has been written unclearly, or perhaps with the wrong orientation or diacritical marks upon demonstration of the writing by the writer.

In the long term, I do believe that certification would be a very good thing, and any school system that uses SW in its daily practice will need to come up with a way to grade competency.

My thoughts,

Charles Butler

Stefan Woehrmann <stefanwoehrmann at SIGNWRITING.ORG> wrote:
Hi Stephen,

mh perhaps I missed some messages in between but -

I am sorry - would you mind to explain in more detail ?

What I understand that there is the idea to look at a SW-document and
understand more about the whys and hows?

What might influence an authors style of writing ... So we speak about
typed - SW-DOS based Documents

or do you include handwritten documents-

I would like to know:

first of all - what is the reason for the idea to write the document this
way.

Where and how did the scribe learn to write SW?

Let us discuss levels of Sign language ability - 1-10 (Do you know of any
criteria to judge the level of competence) -
What is your idea - do you expect any connection between SL competence and
SW competence?

What is Text language ability? ?

What is translation ability ? The ability to translate an idea from SL to
spoken Language and vice versa?

And the top of the interesting issues: How to estimate SignWriting ability -

Some months or even years ago we discussed the problem to get kind of
certificates that gives kind of proof that the person who passed this test
is a certified SW - reader/writer ? But I am afraid that there are too many
problems connected with that. The whole problem with reading and writing
spoken languages would be much more complex at this stage of development of
SW.


Stefan ;-))
L.I.F.E.




-----Urspr ÿÿ gliche Nachricht-----
Von: SignWriting List [mailto:SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA]Im Auftrag von
Stephen Slevinski
Gesendet: Dienstag, 15. Juni 2004 10:35
An: SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
Betreff: Analyzing SignWriting based on writer profile


Hi List,

There is probably a paper on this somewhere, but I haven  :¼  found it yet.

What factors should I consider when analyzing a piece of SignWriting? There
are so many to consider.

Here are a few ideas I have
ÿÿ arly deaf, late deaf, or hearing
deaf family, hearing family, or mixed
raised manual, oral, bilingual
Sign language ability 1-10
SignWriting ability 1-10
Text language ability 1-10
Translation ability 1-10

Would this list accurately profile a writer? What would be an effective
list?

Thanks,
-Stephen Slevinski
www.oculog.net
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