Doing British Sign Language Level 2 :)

(I can't seem to sleep... hence why I am chatting so much in the forum right now... Lol)

Anyways... I thought i'd chat about this...

I have started my Level 2 British Sign Language Course.

It's once a Week (Weds) for an hour and half for the next 20 odd Weeks. I did my Level 1 a year ago... wishing I had gone straight onto Level 2 'cause i'm finding I have forgot alot. :S

Soooo. Last Week was pretty much the 'introduction'. There's 9 of us in my class, I like small groups... seems easier to gel that way

We did a through recaps and he told us (well, signed to us) what we were going to be doing for L2. It's going to be VERY hard

We watched a DVD of someone telling us a story. I was watching it thinking "OMG!!! I can't understand MOST of this"... then I looked round and EVERYONE seemed to have the same expression on their face (thank god )

I am getting ok at the whole signing myself... it's reading it from others where I get lost.

Looking forward to Tomorrow's lesson... it's all good

Thats quite interesting - we used to have a poster up in the staff room at the college I work at, which showed the alphabet as signed with sign language. A member of staffs granddaughter worked for the council as a sign language specialist I seem to recall...and I live just down the road from a school called Donaldson's which is a special needs school specifically for the hearing impaired. They moved the school from an old building in Edinburgh to our town after the rent became too expensive but anyway, yeah its interesting - I've never learnt it myself, I know there are different schools of thought (so to speak - or should I say sign? lol) about it, some people think that deaf people would be better to learn to lip read not learn sign language or after a set age anyway because such a small percentage of the general population knows and can communicate with that as a language. Some people don't know how to lip read at all and so can only communicate via sign language, which is a little worrying when they presumably go out into the general world surrounded by able hearing people :-/ maybe its more up to us to learn sign language but I can't quite imagine it being added to the syllabus so every child learns it at school.

But anywhooo...best of luck with your course, sounds challenging but worthwhile! there are some shows shown late at night on BBC (the news, documentaries etc.) which are signed, maybe it might help you practice if you tape and watch them...just a thought(?).

Yeah I catch the late night shows when I can but tbh I don't really watch much UK TV :S

I think my mate, who lives in Wales, was saying her daughter learns Sign Language at school. Reckon it'd be good for it to be a lesson at School.

Has another lesson on Wednesday!! We had to choose our topics for our assessments.

For presentation (we have to sign about 30 words to make it flow) I chose to sign about my DREAM HOLIDAY!!!

For convo (have to sit with teacher talking about something and they ask questions) I have chose to talk about what I would buy if someone gave me LOTS OF MONEY!!

We worked on the 'dream holiday' in class on Wed. He came to me and asked me to try sign my dream holiday... well... i've had my dream holiday planned in my head FOREVER so it was just the matter of getting the right signs... I kinda went on and on... which is what he wants I suppose.

I even got the sentence "go to a coffee shop, buy a coffee (even though I don't like it) just so I can sit and look for cute guys" ha ha!!

Well... it is my DREAM holiday!!!

I always wanted to do a BSL course. I remember learning the alphabet at Brownies. My mum is a carer and once had a deaf client to I was teaching her how to spell her name.

I like your coffee idea!

D

Lol thats a random convo to have but its pretty cool all the same ahh a dream holiday, thats a nice thing to think about on a Friday evening when its pitch dark outside - sun, sea and relaxation - bring it on! well either that or a city break to the US - ooh, would love that... oh and coincidentally, I don't like coffee either lol!. Do your hands hurt at all after doing all that signing? it looks quite uh vigorous on TV sometimes!

Never really thought about it... so I guess the answer would be no... my arms/hands don't seem to hurt when doing it for a while. Though I guess the longest i've done it without stopping has only been about 5-10 mins. :S

My dream holiday is New York and Las Vegas. I went into a convo about jumping into a yello cab and shouting "follow that taxi"... LOL!!! I also said I wanted to visit the Big Fountain in Las Vegas and stand where they do in the film Ocean's 11. LOL!!!

I also want to stand by a NYPD truck and get my photo taken... also, buy a pretzel and/or corn dog off a dude on the corner of the streets.

Ha ha!!! Soooooo much I want to do (that are quite weird).. but it will help with me learning my BSL.

Lol awesome! me too. Actually speaking of Vegas, I remember an episode of CSI (the original one set in Vegas) which involved a deaf teenager who was run over and killed and it turned out these thugs had seen him singing and thought he was being 'disrespectful'/rude and run over him because of it - they hadn't realised he was deaf! *doh* that was a really sad story

WOW!!! That is quite scary

I had another lesson today. Came out of it with my head all mashed.

There seems to be people in the class that pick things up soooo easy... and it makes me feel

Like, we watched a Video today of people having a convo in Sign Language. The teacher was stopping every now and then to see if we knew what was being said... some in the class were like "yeah" and then telling him what was being said... I was just sitting there all confuzzled

Going to do alot of practicing this week... I obv need it.

I imagine you wouldn't be the only one finding it difficult at times - maybe you should try and ask some of the others what they find helps them learn(?). Good luck