SW textbooks with all illustrations ?

[Gagnon & thibeault]

Hi  everyone,
 
I recently printed lessons/exercises for English and French Sign Writing
(SW) Textbooks.
 
I met with Deaf teachers and showed them French lessons/exercises from this
SW Textbook which I lent to them for several weeks.  Unfortunatley, after
some time, they  decided that they would not use it (and this for various
reasons as outlined further on).  I was, however, still very happy to listen
to their comments and opinions.
 
They were very interested in reading the different examples such as:
*    the three basic handshapes
*    the palm facing, and
*    the contact symbols,
as these illustrations helped them better understand.
 
However, they found it very difficult to grasp the 10 hand groups, the
travelling rotations, the curved, axil, circular and body movements, the
facial expressions, dynamics, etc.,  as the Deaf teachers did not quite
understand  a lot of the descriptions and some of the illustrations.  They
did not really appreciate having to figure out the different symbols without
illustrations and showed no interest in learning from the SW Textbook.  They
were confident that lessons/exercises taught from the SW Textbook for
hearing signers could expand faster than that of deaf signers.
 
And, I must agree with them; I do recognize the fact that SW List Members
who hear are more interested to learn and research than the Deaf SW List
Members because the deaf population, in general, does not have the facility
to write a spoken language.
 
I was told by Deaf teachers that if the lessons in SW Textbooks had more
illustrations for the 10 hand groups, etc., (as mentioned earlier), they
would be more than happy to study them again and
even teach same  to Deaf children as these children also need to visualize.
 
And now, I ask you all, do you own a SW Textbook with all or more
illustrations ?, because if you did, it could help Deaf professionals better
understand the above.
 
Best regards,
 
André Thibeault
 
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