Yay! I’ve finished CIT for the year. I am not celebrating too loudly though, because I really enjoy it. It’s just that after a whole year, you do get a bit tired, so the summer break is welcome. I just hope I don’t forget everything over the summer, which is another good reason to keep this blog ticking along – to keep me engaged with Auslan matters.
Over the summer I am planning to keep doing some learning by watching more YouTube videos. I’ve also purchased my first video camera recently, so I’d like to film myself signing some more. I’ve already noticed that my signing doesn’t look like I expected it to. My hands often seem soft, with open, rounded fingers when they should be straight and together, for example. It’s a bit icky to look at oneself on film, but it really is valuable. Thank you to the interpreter who told me that filming herself was invaluable practice for her in her early days.
The other thing I would like to do over the hols is devote a bit of time to some linguistic research. I now have about five pages of questions relating to how adults learn fingerspelling. Next, I need to hit up my teachers for a bit of their time to ask them about their perceptions of how adults learn fingerspelling.
Another unrelated area I would like to explore more is the world of overheard conversation. I work in a cubicle within an open-plan office. It gets pretty noisy some days, so I often wear earplugs to block out the sound. This means I don’t hear the corridor conversations or the phone chatter around me. Although I am able to focus more on my work, I always have a niggling feeling that I might be missing out on some useful information. This, of course, is the situation for Deaf people all the time. But what exactly are they missing? What is the nature of those types of conversations? What are the costs and benefits of not having access to the information in overheard conversations? What are the ways people catch up on information not overheard? How does this differ between professional, home and social life?
Hmmm….lots to think about over summer….
