A BSL update
May. 18th, 2016 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettSo I'm three sessions into the Improvers' class, though I missed the second by dint of being in Cornwall; having spent a lot of last term learning principles and grammar and getting used to moving our hands and receiving sign (and a big introductory lot of vocab!), we're now getting lots more vocab, and last week's homework was to work out 100-200 (English) words' worth of story about our lives, then bring it to class as BSL.
I promptly had a lot of thoughts, contained herein.
Thing the first: we're a group of about eight, and class lasts two hours. Going round the group to show our homework, and then get feedback on it from our teacher, can take up a substantial proportion of the class -- but it is also a super useful learning experience, in terms of receptive practice (can you follow what your classmates are saying?) and in terms of everyone benefiting from feedback/workshopping.
And honestly this is great: in fact I can mostly follow, and I'm getting much better at working out what's going on if I miss something, and about relaxing about not getting every single sign -- which is a big deal for bundle-of-nerves perfectionist me, okay. Plus it increases vocab. Plus I get to think about what I'd do differently, maybe, and see how that matches up with what Hap, our teacher, says. (Like, somewhere along the line I've got good enough at this that I can watch people's mouthshape while also watching their hands well enough to follow? WHAT EVEN.)
Thing the second: my actual signing has improved enough that I was able to look up some relevant vocabulary, and then just... tell my story. Fluently. And sign it again, with differences and clarifications, when I was asked to repeat myself, because my teacher had missed an early important sign (and had therefore thought everything was happening in Sweden not in Cornwall and had got, er, very confused -- not, she emphasised, because anything I'd signed had been unclear, but because this is just a thing that happens.)
Thing the third: I got two main things out of the feedback I got. The first is that BSL does the thing I think of as more German than English, of lots of interstitial bits I don't know the grammar word for that indicate general mood. That is absolutely something I can Just Work On Doing, via (a) practising the signs so they're natural to me and (b) making sure I'm actually including them when practising sentences and the like. The second, though, is that I'm not doing as much role-shift and acting out of emotions experienced during telling people about my day/week/whatever as our teacher does, and while I can see that it makes sense and such when she does it I think actually to some extent this might be a stylistic thing that for my own purposes I can leave out, because it's just... not a way it occurs to me to communicate unless I'm actively thinking of it because, hey, autism.
Thing the fourth: I am really enjoying the multichannel signs we're learning, but I am having SO MUCH TROUBLE with ears up/ears down (not actually on that list) because it's canine body language and I've spent more of my time around horses.
Which obviously I think is very funny, but hey, provided I remember it's dogs for long enough to do next week's homework...
I promptly had a lot of thoughts, contained herein.
Thing the first: we're a group of about eight, and class lasts two hours. Going round the group to show our homework, and then get feedback on it from our teacher, can take up a substantial proportion of the class -- but it is also a super useful learning experience, in terms of receptive practice (can you follow what your classmates are saying?) and in terms of everyone benefiting from feedback/workshopping.
And honestly this is great: in fact I can mostly follow, and I'm getting much better at working out what's going on if I miss something, and about relaxing about not getting every single sign -- which is a big deal for bundle-of-nerves perfectionist me, okay. Plus it increases vocab. Plus I get to think about what I'd do differently, maybe, and see how that matches up with what Hap, our teacher, says. (Like, somewhere along the line I've got good enough at this that I can watch people's mouthshape while also watching their hands well enough to follow? WHAT EVEN.)
Thing the second: my actual signing has improved enough that I was able to look up some relevant vocabulary, and then just... tell my story. Fluently. And sign it again, with differences and clarifications, when I was asked to repeat myself, because my teacher had missed an early important sign (and had therefore thought everything was happening in Sweden not in Cornwall and had got, er, very confused -- not, she emphasised, because anything I'd signed had been unclear, but because this is just a thing that happens.)
Thing the third: I got two main things out of the feedback I got. The first is that BSL does the thing I think of as more German than English, of lots of interstitial bits I don't know the grammar word for that indicate general mood. That is absolutely something I can Just Work On Doing, via (a) practising the signs so they're natural to me and (b) making sure I'm actually including them when practising sentences and the like. The second, though, is that I'm not doing as much role-shift and acting out of emotions experienced during telling people about my day/week/whatever as our teacher does, and while I can see that it makes sense and such when she does it I think actually to some extent this might be a stylistic thing that for my own purposes I can leave out, because it's just... not a way it occurs to me to communicate unless I'm actively thinking of it because, hey, autism.
Thing the fourth: I am really enjoying the multichannel signs we're learning, but I am having SO MUCH TROUBLE with ears up/ears down (not actually on that list) because it's canine body language and I've spent more of my time around horses.
Which obviously I think is very funny, but hey, provided I remember it's dogs for long enough to do next week's homework...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-19 09:37 pm (UTC)I believe that after so many hours of exposure, new SL learners develop different connections in our brains and hands. I had that same, "wow, my field of understanding has expanded from hands to hands+face to entire upper body."
My amazing moment was when my dominant hand finger spelling (ASL uses a one-hand alphabet) finally became fluent. At the same time I was able to spell almost as fluently with my other hand. I thought I'd been training new motor skills, but mainly it was brain instead.
Congrats!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-23 08:51 pm (UTC)