AW: [sw-l] BSL Reading Test :)

[Stefan Woehrmann]

Hi Sandy,

ha - great job - congrats  -

Now I can perform your "stills" (smile)

>From the point of everyday use at school - nope - my students would feel
pretty unhappy - why?

Well - the  message is: " I have written something and it is shown to you in
order to understand, to react, to answer, to learn - whatever -
The student will feel like: "Uups , I am not skilled enough to read, to
understand ... "
It is different if you play games like - I will show you some information
but that is not all. Can you add the missing information on your own?? "
X bxt Yxy xry ybly ty yndyrstynd thxsx wyrds.  ;-))
back to your handwriting:
But as long as there are many invariants and guessing - hm - I bet only one
of them would ask something like : is # 1 6 something with to see, to watch,
to look at , ....
or # 8 has perhaps to do with telephone, or to call somebody. - ...

Please do me the favour and write down this set of signs (only 10 - smile)
by hand with all the necessary detailed symbol set that is needed to inform
me as a foreigner. So as an advanced SW reader I should be able to perform
the sign in a way that a BSL competent visitor should understand my signing
if he/she is watching me while I am reading/performing/signing  your
document.


"...and I'm _still_ correcting errors as I go!"

That is what all of us are doing whenever we look at our documents. And in
fact I feel more successful if one of my students or workshop - participants
indicates that this or that is "funny" or "wrong" or "strange-looking"  -
this shows insight.  He /she   got it! I could teach him /her  -- wow .
So whenever I realize that I would love to change a specific spelling that
is a demonstration of insightful reading. - and that is wonderful - to
overcome the stage of pictogram-reading as I call the first stage of
reading.

Many beginners are excellent "Pictogram - readers"  but it takes more time
to become an analytic reader and even much more time and  a lot of
experience to become a qualified scribe!  In Germany we do not allow as much
time to develop writing skills in SW as we do for Spoken Language -  (I
personally regret that very much!!- )
So I am interested to study the development of handwriting with our own
little home-group (12, 10, 6 years old)
The six year old has not visited school until now.  He developed great SW-
Pictogram - reading skills but his ability to read spoken German is
amazing!!
He started to read GebaerdenSchrift-documents at the age of 2 1/2   but
started to read spoken language not until 5

"....they like the idea of baing able to do it, but it looks complicated. Or
I
show them the manual, but they don't believe it's anything _they_ could..."

Yes, we discussed  this dilemma several times. There is no use to try to
persuade anybody to understand that he is supposed to miss a special
qualification !  (And all of us who understand and experience the benefits
of this SW- invention - can't help but shake our heads. - cause we
understand day by day that literacy in SL (written signed language) is a
wonderful, wonderful gift to extend our level of perceiving and performing
SL.

" ... few rough notes at a meeting just as quickly as anybody could in
English!"

Well - I have been told, that there are people in the world  ... and who
knows perhaps the one and other will be able to speed up - but for now  I
myself am unable to even pay attention to 3 or 4 parameters of a given
sign -
(smile)  I would be happy to write down a spelling that comes very close to
a individual performance ...

So it will be the question of how exactly you would like to describe what is
going on ...

I changed my mind and think differently today.  Now I can say that it may
take a few seconds to write down the spelling of a sign - but it is saved.
Contrary to that - what do you have if you simply write down the gloss ?
Almost nothing!  So comparing the alternative anybody who is interested in
learning new signs for terms from geography, nature, religion or sexuality
should be happy to be able to save the performance in its complexity - This
way we may prevent silent post - errors ( do you know this game - whispering
into the ear , or signing so quickly and only once that by transferring from
person to person in the end there is a sign/ word that is completely
different.
So I very much appreciate accurate writing - it is fine for me to take a
quick note - but add the rest if it comes down to transfer this sign into a
SW-dictionary. (But nobody else would know the "forgotten" symbols and me
neither if I have to do so much that I could not do the dictionary within
the few next hours/days.
So again - it is not a question of speed - from my point of view and believe
me- if both of us would write at the blackboard your ten signs - with and
without the additional symbols - time would not be the questions - ha
definitely not since it would cause only seconds to finish the same job but
with much more information -

Thanks for your input
Looking forward to your next  png
Stefan ;-)









-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu]Im Auftrag von Sandy Fleming
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. Oktober 2004 12:32
An: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Betreff: RE: [sw-l] BSL Reading Test :)

Hi Stefan!

> Hi Sandy - perhaps you would like to rewrite 1,5,6 and 9 once again?

Oops! OK, see new gif  :)

I write, and then copy useful signs from my writing onto a sheet, correcting
lots of errors. Then I use this sheet to enter signs into the dictionary,
and I'm _still_ correcting errors as I go! If anyone is concerned about
this, perhaps they should check the BSL dictionary for quality while it's
still small!

> smile -   (I  understand that your goal is to make the paper burn

Not exactly! I show BSL users here signs and sentences I've written, and
they like the idea of baing able to do it, but it looks complicated. Or I
show them the manual, but they don't believe it's anything _they_ could
learn. I don't think I'm going to be able to get anyone I know in "real
life" interested unless I can write a sentence up on a whiteboard or make a
few rough notes at a meeting just as quickly as anybody could in English!
Some signs are simple to execute but very "busy" to write. Even if I wrote
such signs fast, I think onlookers would be discouraged, imagining that this
is more of a circus trick than anything that could be taught to everybody.

> nevertheless it seems important to me to keep in line with the general
> spelling -rules ;-)

Yes, me too. However, this isn't changing any rules, it's just simplyfing by
omission. In Val's "SignSpelling Guidelines" document, she mentions
"simplified spelling for children" and "detailed spelling for researchers",
but I would suggest changing this to "simplified spelling for everyday use"
and "detailed spelling for researchers".

In the same document Val also talks of spelling signs in up to four
alternating "syllables" - Position+Movement+Position+Movement. She
recommends not writing the final "Movement" syllable unless it's necessary
to distinguish from other signs.

Val seems to mean omitting the fourth syllable, but what I'm suggesting is
that any final movement is a candidate for omission. So Val is saying:

P+M+P+M - deleted the final Movement if no ambiguity

but I'm saying to also delete the final movement in a sing with just P+M,
leaving just P.

So it's not really a change of rules, just a matter of degree.

It's a bit like the way dictionaries have pronumciation guides as well as
the usual spellings.

> (What do you think Tini? - I bet you have to smile at this comment - since
> we had lots of exchange of this kind- )

Oh dear, I'm reinventing the wheel  :)

What was your conclusion from these exchanges? Just remember, it's not
science unless others can read your results and repeat the experiment!

Sandy