2 things.
1) Got 100% on that quiz. :) Even though I thought the structure was all wrong and testing the wrong way, but I will still take a perfect.
2) I biked with my friend on Sunday. We went for 16 miles from her house to the DC line at Rock Creek Park. It was an awesome ride. Lots of people on biking, running, exploring. Even some fun bikes like tandems, ones with 3 wheels, recumbent. Tada picture! It's not my picture, I found it via google. Maybe next time.
Currently, I think I may be losing my job due to budget cuts, so I might be looking at more time to blog. Today in ASL class we had our first quiz. The teacher that continues to surprise me passed out a paper quiz. It was two pages front and back (long for a quiz). The first section was fingerspelling. For those of you that don't know what I mean, here is a good example.
Each letter of the English alphabet has a manual version. The quiz had us watch what the teacher was spelling and write down the word in English. This part of the quiz I actually thought was useful. Fingerspelling is hard to do and to learn to read.
The second part of the quiz, I think was a cope out. Teacher signed a word and we had to write the English word down. Luckily the teacher picked lots of common words and nouns, but ASL has a lot of signs that can be made in different ways and with different meanings in context. But I'm pretty sure I aced it.
Here is the part I think was wrong. Part 3 the teacher signed a sentence and we had to write the meaning in English. This to me is not testing anything. It's testing my receptive skills but to what end? Say I understand the sentence but don't think there is a word that specifically works in English for it. That happens a lot. Also this ASL class is not an interpreter class. It's to learn the language. I should not be graded on my ability to convert the languages back and forth, but in my ability to understand and to produce the new language. I am sure that not everyone agrees with me but it really frustrated me. In all my other ASL classes for quizzes we have been given a prompt, asked to converse in ASL with a partner following that prompt and then graded on not only our understanding, but our production too.
In other news, I think tomorrow I'm going to ride my bike. If that happens, I'll be sure to blog about it! Hahah maybe since I have been writing my rants about ASL class, I'll sign about my bike ride. Still taking suggestions on how to add captions about the video.
I have learned a lot in the past year about ASL, Deaf Culture, and visual communication. I started taking an ASL class at the local community college this past week. Coming from the only Deaf university to a ASL classroom at a local community college was kind of a shock in itself. First off, my teacher is hearing. She is not Deaf. That's like a huge red flag in my mind. Hearing person teaching hearing students about the Deaf's language system. Seems wrong.
But after the initial distaste, I think I like the teacher. She has shown a respect for my variations and signs and I trust her knowledge of the structure of the language. I will keep you all posted about how the class is going for the next 7 weeks or whatever.
