Teaching Signwriting to deaf children in Tunisia A PROPOSAL FOR ALL

Fri Jan 3 20:35:11 UTC 2014

SignWriting List
January 3, 2014

Thank you, Erika, for pointing this out …I am glad you addressed this issue already in your article in this Journal:

Journal: Signs and Society
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=signandsoci

Article:
(Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship between German Sign Language and German across Scales of SignWriting Practice
Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
Oberlin College
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/672321

I am also glad we can read the article directly on the web.

Your point, which you mention below, that it varies from person to person, and is not necessarily an issue of which language, but more the differences in the people who use those languages - that certainly makes sense - 

Thank you so much for writing and publishing this article -

Val ;-)

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On Jan 3, 2014, at 12:14 PM, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway <erhoffma at OBERLIN.EDU> wrote:

> Hi Val - I addressed those questions about mouthing (and also noticed the parallel with fingerspelling) in my recent article in Signs and Society. What I basically argue is that it's going to vary across signers, depending on their particular histories and repertoires, whether and how they connect these movements to speech or writing. In other words, that the answers to these questions don't exist in the language(s) themselves but in the people using them :)
> I think that's a useful way of thinking about the way everybody uses language actually, including as Val mentioned, for understanding how people's repertoires might include parts of lots different languages! 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 1:55 PM, Valerie Sutton <signwriting at mac.com> wrote:
> SignWriting List
> January 3, 2014
> 
> Hello Stefan -
> THANK YOU, for the in-depth message below, which you wrote before Christmas, to the List. I confess I just read it this morning - but I am so glad that I did… I really enjoyed reading it, and as always, I am impressed and amazed at your work, and grateful to you too, for using SignWriting all these years with your Deaf students. 
> 
> If I remember correctly, you have already graduated one class of Deaf students, who used SignWriting for over a decade in your classroom? … and now you have a new young crop of Deaf students, who are the second class to learn SignWriting for a decade, or at least will - smile - is this correct? I think this is important because I am curious how your students who graduated already (now that they are older and out in the world) … how are they doing? I am sure your attentive teaching style gave them a great foundation to base their adult lives upon, in this complex world of today -
> 
> I was interested to learn of your idea for further research on how signers read mouth movements that are connected with spoken language words, that are mouthed while signing…A research study of the future could try to investigate if Deaf people connect spoken language with mouthing, or is it really just a part of the signing experience?
> 
> The same research-style question could arise related to ASL fingerspelling. ASL signers use a lot of fingerspelling, and for hearing people like myself, (I am not skilled at reading fingerspelling), I have been amazed at my lack of ability to connect fingerspelling with my own native language, English. It also seems surprising to me that Deaf people read fingerspelling so well, when some of them are not necessarily English-focused …so there seems to be a disconnect between signing along with using mouthing or fingerspelling, and reading a spoken language on paper.
> 
> I think Deaf Education is very hard, because each school, and indeed each classroom, is like its own little culture, with a set of circumstances that is unique to itself. It is impossible to judge a teacher or student without being there in the classroom and seeing all the communication that transpires. What matters, I would assume, is to educate and inspire students, and I would also assume that teachers have to take into account how their school administrators feel, how their fellow teachers feel in that specific school, and most important, how the parents and home-life of each student “feels” to that student.
> 
> Seeing it from this perspective, it makes one realize that no matter how idealistic we are, about wanting “pure ASL” or “pure DGS” for Deaf students, the truth is that we all live in a hodgepodge of languages and cultures now, because of globalization and also the internet and so many other multi-tasking influences, and “pure” ANY language is rare and difficult to find today - People are using Texting spelling when writing English for example and I am left behind at times, since I have never texted - and Deaf students need to adjust to so many more factors than hearing people - it is mind boggling to think about what they have to learn in such a stressful, multi-tasking world -
> 
> That is one of the reasons why I am glad that with the SignWriting script we can preserve and write the sign languages of the world, in their purer forms, as they are signed right now, so that future generations can see how signing was done in past generations, since languages continually change - 
> 
> I hope you get great joy out of teaching and writing and creating new documents and ideas and art in 2014!
> 
> Val ;-)
> 
> ———
> 
> 
> On Dec 22, 2013, at 3:58 PM, Stefan Wöhrmann <stefanwoehrmann at GOOGLEMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Erika, James, Val and friends...
>>  
>> Thank you Erika for your comment. I am afraid that my English is not good enough to describe what I have on my mind and I appreciate your message as a comment about your first-hand experience in my classes over the years...;-))
>>  
>> Well James,
>>  
>> 1)       It is as Erika explains it perfectly. You honestly will not assume that I do not know the difference between Signed German and DGS (German Sign Language) – and as I started with my privous message: The first step is to assure that teacher  and student and students among each other can communicate. Within a group of deaf people this communication is done in SignLanguage  ( not Signed German).  
>>  
>> At the end of this learning adventure any student should be able to switch between the two systems Signlanguage and Spoken Language. Some of my students develop a high motivation to work hard to improve their articulation – others do no like to speak. Nevertheless all of them are exspected to become competent in both Languages (Sign Language and Spoken Language)  This is definitely not only a BI-MODEL methodology – as you call it but a bilingual approach.
>>  
>> “Use it if you must; but recognize it for what it is.”  Hm – in between the lines I can see the frown on your face. Signed German ... you never would use that. Am I right? – smile -  It is as Erika might be able to explain much better. The step in between the start and the end of our learning procedure is to support deaf students with Signed German. Experience has shown that the students achieve bilingual competence so much faster if they get the chance to read and “translate” written documents that show signs written in the grammar of Spoken German.
>> Next step will be to demonstrate the contrast between Signlanguage and Spoken Language. They understand much better and in the end it is a pure bilingual approach and the students translate from one system inot the other in both directions. .
>>  
>> Thanks to our delegs-editor – the most effective tool for building the bridge between Spoken Language and Signlanguage  - you can do this back and forth thing so easily.  It is your job to write any document within seconds in whatever style you want to. If you want to create SignLanguage document – just write the words that pick the signs from the dictionary – edit the signs to appropriate DGS oder ASL and hide the words afterwards. Same thing with Signed German documents. ...I am so gratefull that it has become so easy to offer lots and lots and lots of documents every day with this brilliant DELEGS – software.
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> 2)      Hi James – when I referr to name-signs in SignWriting as pictograms – I cannot see any negative aspect in this. My experiments in this field show clearly that you and me and other experienced scribes look at these arrangements of single symbols which we take out of the big ISWA –box with other eyes. And we read the given signs in a analytic way. We understand the meaning of the single symbols. Many well written signs seem to become a “Gute Gestalt” and the deaf child and some beginners who start to read SignWriting do not analyze and even do not know ( and do not have to) about all the decisions the scribe has made while he choose to write the sign in this way. It is amazing – and funny at the same time – to see that a well known sign – ( a sign that is identified within part of a second) can be changed (in the sense of misspelled) and the deaf child would not hesitate to “read” it the same way as before... I did some private research on this and it is really tremendously interesting. Hi Erica - .... smile!
>>  
>> “...by that logic, showing the kid his written German name is also using a pictogram” – yes of course – as long as the child has no idea about any method to interpret the graphems in any way as options how to encourage somebody to speak what is written – and that is of course a long journey especially for deaf kids.
>>  
>> “-- a jumble of otherwise pointless letters whose order must be memorized.”  In order to change this I invented this new notation system for sound-based symbols. “Mundbildschrift” = “Woehrmanns Speech-Writing”
>>  
>> This exactly is the basis why I invented my “Speech-Writing –System” ... but this is a whole other story and people get confused because of two different systems  - a VISUALLY PHONETIC system (as used in my mouthgestures “Mundbilder” in Signwriting) and an  aural based phonetic code  in this case “Mundbildschrift”
>>  
>>  
>> 3)      “German employs an aural based phonetic code..”  ..ha...yes .... well there are a lot of problems beause this matching of letters and sounds does not work in German... too many exceptions... This causes problems in the context of lipreading, It is a severe fault to tell a hearing child – just write what you hear – it does not work. You better should say look at the spelling of this German word (just as a string of letters) and listen to me. You hear the way we pronounce this word. Just accept that and obey the spelling.
>>  
>> From my point of view deaf students expand their vocabulary of Spoken German much better if they get the chance to associate with given words some kind of tongue, mouth, lip –movement – feedback. How does it feel if you pronounce the word Reagenzglas, Universalindikator, Koordinatenkreuz, Baden-Württemberg.  A combination of reading the word, looking at the appropriate sign in SignWriting along with the mouth-gestures as you find them constantly in the German SignPuddle allows deaf students to speed up with the aqcuisition of new terms.
>>  
>> Deaf students can read SignWriting documents at high speed even if they do now know about the meaning of the (isolated) symbols.  I am still in the beginning to understand this and to accept this and to arrange experiments in order to find more about that.
>>  
>> When Erika did her research project in my classes it has been almost like a mystery to both of us that deaf students move their lips or read a sign in GebaerdenSchrift with Mundbilder – and nevertheless do not associate these mouth movements with German words as we do.  We referr in this case to some association of the spoken word – while a deaf child might perform this part of the sign just as a movement part of the lips not knowing that the lipreading would lead to a quick identification of the German word. ... There is probably still lots of room for research – right Erika? You are very welcome to visit us again any time. You want me ask if you can rent the appartement again? Your research and the way you expalin these questions to me are a very welcome source for greater attention.
>>  
>>  
>> Hope this helps – sorry for my English ;-(
>>  
>> All best Stefan   
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Von: SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages [mailto:SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU] Im Auftrag von Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
>> Gesendet: Sonntag, 22. Dezember 2013 23:18
>> An: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
>> Betreff: Re: Teaching Signwriting to deaf children in Tunisia A PROPOSAL FOR ALL
>>  
>> Hi James - Stefan can of course speak for himself, but since I'm at the computer I'll just briefly note from my observations in his class he does use both German Sign Language and Signed German - and clearly treats them as different codes (i.e., SG is framed as German in a different modality not as a sign language). I think he was focusing on his use of Signed German in his earlier message to highlight the ways in which he thinks SW can be useful for teaching a spoken language. I'd never been comfortable with the use of a signed version of a spoken language in other educational settings I've observed, but the way that Stefan distinguishes it from German Sign Language and uses each to different ends - or as a means to compare grammatical structures between the two codes- was really interesting.
>> Stefan, please correct me if I'm misframing anything you do.
>> Best,
>> Erika
>>  
>> On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 5:08 PM, James Shepard-Kegl <kegl at maine.rr.com> wrote:
>> Stefan,
>> 
>> I think you and I are going to have to respectfully disagree.
>> 
>> I would point out some issues for all:
>> 
>> 1)  The methodology that Stefan has described is not a BILINGUAL approach; rather, it is a BI-MODEL methodology.  Signed German is not a language different from German; it is a manual form of German.  Use it if you must; but recognize it for what it is.
>> 
>> 2)  Referring to name-signs in SignWriting as pictograms may be appropriate for a Deaf child on his or her first day of school, but know this:  by that logic, showing the kid his written German name is also using a pictogram.
>> 
>> 3)  It truly is more difficult to write a sign than to recognize one.  But, that is true of written English and German, too.  Both othorgraphic systems are phonetic systems: German employs an aural based phonetic code; SignWriting is, if you will, a VISUALLY PHONETIC system.  Most hearing children use a whole word approach when learning to read, but understand that the code itself is based on sounds that are put together to form words.  AND HERE IS MY POINT:  To Deaf chidren, a written German word is a pictogram -- a jumble of otherwise pointless letters whose order must be memorized.  But, when shown how SignWriting works, these children can immediately appreciate the concept that writing systems use a code.  In the case of SignWriting, that code is merely symbols for handshapes, movement and direction, contact, location, etc.  Only when a Deaf child recognizes this, can he or she solve the mystery of how hearing people can so consistently spell words in German so accurately
>>  .  You see, as a hearing person I can quickly relate to the concept that SignWriting is a visually phonetic code.  First, I am not blind, so I can see that it is.  Second, I am already comfortable with the notion of an aurally phonetic writing system.  Alas, the Deaf child -- or the profoundly deaf child, anyway -- may never actually know what a sound is, just like chldren born totally blind cannot imagine colors.  But with SignWriting, the Deaf child might grasp the idea of a sound based writing code by analogy.
>> 
>> -- James
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> -- 
> Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
> Assistant Professor of Anthropology
> Oberlin College
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