flip

I find the "stuck with PSE" a bit strange, when interpreters get fluent in ASL, and did not start to learn it after age of 20.

I wonder if many of the courses available to interpreters should be available to deaf people, too. Hearings gets all the best in ASL nowdays, babies get ASL, grown ups get ASL education. Deaf people are very lucky if they get ASL as babies, and get the change to develop ASL in a tutored environment when grown up.

Even those who are "fluent" could need practice on expressing and translating from language to language. I have seen fluent signers that lacks some awarness on grammars, even if they use the right grammars most of time.

What do you think? Should deaf people attent suited ASL courses? Is "I am stuck with PSE" a imaginary barrier, or a valid excuse?

Deafness

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Tousi

I don't see any reason why any deaf person couldn't take ASL offerings in their locales.

jillio

We have several deaf students in the ASL classes. Some of them were oral as kids, some learned PSE, some learned no sign at all, and some know ASL, but as our instructor is native ASL and Deaf, they are brushing up on their skills and their linguistic knowledge.

Tousi

Even your native ASLers who are often in a position where they are asked "technical" questions about ASL would be smart to take thye type of advanced ASL class that explains those things. Also, I know a couple of ASL natives who teach ASL who should NOT be in the classroom!

jillio

Agreed! We had a CODA who was a native ASLer, but could not teach. Plus, she knew the langauge fluently, of course, but was not able to explain the whys and wherefores of grammar, structure, use of classifiers, etc. Needless to say, she is no longer teaching ASL at the collegiate level. But the instructor I am referring to is not just a native Deaf ASLer, but she is working on her Ph.D. in higher education. She also has extensive course work in linguistics. It is really nice to see ASL given the respect it deserves and the that it is being addressed in the same way that teaching any other foreign language is addressed. Not just, "this sign means that, that sign means this" approach.

Reba

Sure, why not? American hearing people are born and raised with the English language, and yet they take many years of formal English "language arts" classes, so why not the same thing for Deaf people using ASL?

shel90

That's how I got involved with the Deaf culture and learned ASL. It all started with taking ASL classes at ASU for foreign language credits. Little did I know it would change my life.

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jillio

That raises a good point. Maybe I will address this with the Dean when I get back. Should native ASL users be able to get foreign langauge credit for taking English?

RDC_girl

That is a great point! Native ASL users should be able to get foreign language credit for taking English...

VamPyroX

Well, it depends on the individual.

Take me for instance... I'd probably say that I'm stuck with PSE as well.

At the age of 5, I started using MSS. I wasn't exposed to ASL until a few years later when I met other deaf students who were raised with ASL. I also met some deaf people at church a few years after that and they used ASL too. As the years went by, I went from MSS to SEE. I never knew what ASL was until I went to college at the age of 18. I always thought that it was just a sign language system that they made up.

After learning what ASL was, I began to accept it as another form of sign language and attempted to use it in some ways. That's when my SEE began to change to a bit of ASL... becoming PSE. Of course, I didn't know what SEE and PSE meant until I went to RIT 8 years ago.

Today, I sign PSE. I have deaf friends who started out with ASL, but evolved to PSE as well. Our PSE is understood by most people unless they are 100% pure ASL and refuse to even try to understand anyone other than ASL... then ASL is an absolute must in order to communicate with them and that's a challenge for me. This only happens very rarely... about 1% to 5% of the time.

Do you feel that you absolutely have to learn ASL? Are you in a community where ASL is an absolute must? Then it might help to take some ASL courses.

Are you still able to communicate with anyone using PSE? Then there's probably no need to take ASL courses for you can learn better through your peers.

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Interpretrator

In our college program the students are required to take ASL taught by a deaf teacher for the deaf. Among other reasons, it helps in English acquisition because they learn the names and functions for things in the language they may be more comfortable in, and can transfer that knowledge to English. (There is a very wide range of communication modalities in the program so it's not a nice clear-cut case of English being the L2; in most cases it's a mix of English, ASL, SEE, and other native languages.)

The more linguistic knowledge a person has, the better.

I don't know about that. Deaf native ASL users still usually grow up surrounded by English, unless they have been in a minority language community all their lives. (Not all that common but especially in places like Southern California, not unheard of.)

jillio

But there are native English users that have been surrounded by ASL all their lives as CODAs, but can receive foreign language credit for ASL.

It was just one of those, "Hmmmm....." thoughts.

Interpretrator

It's a bit of a double standard, but most likely those CODAs have never studied that language but are fluent from having grown up bilingual. Also, ASL is still very much a minority language (in the educational system) whereas English is not.

I know at our colleges there are classes like "Spanish for Native Speakers" where bilingual students can get credit for studying their own language. With many schools still not allowing foreign language credit for ASL your idea is laudable but I don't think it's realistic just yet.

jillio

Considering that there are still numerous universities that don't even offer ASL fro foreign language credit, I don't think it is realistic at this point, either. Just a thought.

flip

It's interesting that you mention the switch from ASL to PSE. I have seen that myself, especially when deaf ASL'ers starts to write and read effective. They put more english grammars in their ASL. Though, when they are exposed to a fluent ASL community, they develop the skill to clearly switch between SEE/PSE and ASL.

Thanks for the rest of your explaination, it answered some of my pondering on skills in PSE and ASL among deaf people. I don't want to offend anyone here and I might be wrong, but sometimes, from what I have seen in europe, I feel that a deaf engineer lecturing, using a PSE mode, will be more respected for his knowledge, than one that uses 100% sign language, though the knowledge happens to be the same. Thus, the lack of motivation to learn ASL?

jillio

And that is sad, indeed.

Reba

Interesting.

If a hearing person is truly fluent in French and English, doesn't he usually speak fluent French to a French audience, and fluent English to an English audience? I don't believe he starts mixing the French and English together to speak a pidgin version to his French and English listeners.

So a Deaf person can fluently sign ASL with other ASL users, and fluently write English to English users, right? There's no reason to mix the two languages. He doesn't need to sign "English-ly" ASL to ASL users, and he doesn't need to write with ASL grammar to people reading English.

It doesn't make sense.


I don't know all the modes and sign languages of Europe, so I can't address what's happening there. But I know that if a Deaf engineer is lecturing in ASL to his Deaf ASL peers, then there's no reason for anyone to have less respect for that lecturer. If the Deaf engineer signs ASL, PSE, or SEE, and his audience is hearing, then the interpreter would voice the lecture in the correct register for that setting regardless. There's nothing intrinsically more or less "respectable" about ASL, PSE, or SEE. I've seen highly educated "lettered" ASL lecturers, and I've seen redneck crude SEE pontificators. You find all kinds in all languages and modes.

I have noticed that ASL users in professional settings do tend to spell more terms. Note, they spell the entire words rather than create initialized signs for those words.

flip

I understand your point, but like Vamprox said, he have seen ASL'ers convert to PSE among adults(?). So there must be an explaination, when this happens.

I have only seen this among children. I suspect this can be due to the many ways children learns to write and read. It can also be due to children learning about new concepts in book they read, and if they not are sure how to express that idea in ASL, they might resort to the english syntax when re-telling, using something that looks like PSE. ASL does not have it's own written mode, and text are important sources of new knowledge, so a lot of language borrowing may happen. Later, the fluent ASL users will expand their ASL because they have new knowledge from reading, and will rely less on borrowing english syntax than when they first learned to read and write. That might be an explaination. Another explaination is that the teacher uses PSE, and influences the students.

When I lived in the states, I remember that I met some people with this attitude sometimes, that PSE is what higher educated literate people can master, while ASL is.... For example Jane Fernandez and Jordan King are not the best role models when we talk about fluent ASL skills, and Davila's vlog is full of PSE. I wonder if this is a heritage from the oral only era that ruled the most of the western world.

But I am sure, that in other parts of Gallaudet, ASL is looked upon, and a deaf lecturer would be much better of with ASL. But then again, I get the impression that it's not the same everywhere, especially in other universities with a smaller deaf population.

vallee

I just signed up for ASL classes through a local church. I start on Wednesday. My nine year old and I are starting. I wanted to take the class offered by the university, but it is on a night I have other things to do and 300 for a half of semester.

I also found a deaf/hard of hearing Sunday School class.

I am not a visual learner. I am auditory. Any suggestions????

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shel90

I was told that I am an auditory learner since my profound loss..(maybe that's why I do so well with my HAs)

practice practice practice is the best suggestion I can offer. Immersing myself into a signing environment really did the trick cuz after 4 levels of ASL at ASU, I was still not even halfway fluent because I didnt immerse myself at all. I realized at that point for me to become fluent, I had to immerse myself into it cuz I am not a visual learner.

Since becoming fluent in it, I have noiticed that I am getting better with my spatial skills.

Good luck!

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Tousi

A well-intended thought, Jillio but here's the rub and I see it all the time: The people who hire these ASL instructors are hearing people in the main; what do they know about assessing someone (applicants) for the job?

Mizzou

I am PSE signer but many time Treps or deafies not understand my signing so I need learn ASL as same as hearing learning.

jillio

Glad to hear that vallee. Good luck, and keep us informed on your progress. Suggestions for an auditory learner? Just going to have to learn how not to assign sound to the signs in order to comprehend the concept. That is the problem that many hearing students of ASL encounter. You can't think of ASL as the equivalent of an orally based language. You just have to see it. Like when you look at a painting. You just see it, and you intuit meaning before you are able to describe what you see in words.

shel90

Yea, that was the mistake I did at first until my brother told me to think in pictures. It was like I got it finally.

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jillio

Yeah, I did it too early on. That was how a deaf guy explained it to me and it worked.

jasin

Deaf people take asl courses all the time. Some do it for just practice, some like me .. to get an easy A (4.0) to boost the gpa lol, and others because they have never learnt asl. Whatever the reasons are though the deaf are very welcomed in asl classes.