ASL class midterm assignment...

[society's_child]

... we as a class are going to a silent dinner. In other words, we will meet up at an eating establishment (preferably the Cheescake Factory) and not speak for the entire time. We will have to use our hands or whatever else we have at our disposal. This will (my professor's words here) will make us more sympathetic about deaf people who go out to eat and help us to realize what a tremendous hassle it can be. Deafies: what's it like??

I'm quite interested in how it's all going to turn out. I've got some major motormouths in my class so it will probably be a full-on challenge to keep their traps shut the entire time.

I say bring it on!

 

[eliotj]

... we as a class are going to a silent dinner. In other words, we will meet up at an eating establishment (preferably the Cheescake Factory) and not speak for the entire time. We will have to use our hands or whatever else we have at our disposal. This will (my professor's words here) will make us more sympathetic about deaf people who go out to eat and help us to realize what a tremendous hassle it can be. Deafies: what's it like??

I'm quite interested in how it's all going to turn out. I've got some major motormouths in my class so it will probably be a full-on challenge to keep their traps shut the entire time.

I say bring it on!

I was invited to one of these, though I didn't go, I hear their nice.
The closest thing I've experienced are the clasrooms where there may be hearies, but we're told NO VOICE
Anything you have to say..say it with your hands.

As an ASL student and not an interpreter, I'm often told that when I "speak" to interpreters, NOT to voice, but to sign.
This actually does help; but in the case of a public outing, you will blend in better with the crowd in for which you've been invited.

 

[Reba]

I attend MANY silent dinners. Some are "strictly" silent, some are flexible (because some of the Deafies prefer to use their voices!).

I've attended workshops where we practice "Deaf, Deaf World." That can be a real challenge but worth it. :P

 

[Wheelin Rev]

society's_child,

I attended my first get together of a Deaf Chat Coffee today. We had 15 or so folks. Talked/signed/wrote for nearly 3 1/2 hours. It was great and I learned a lot. I am losing my hearing and hear about 30% of spoken words with hearing aids IF there is no background noise (HoH).

My advise to y'all might be to take paper and pencil.

I wrote and had terp assistance. I'm learning ASL. We had a blast!

Dave

 

[Chuck]

I hang out with my completely deaf friends sometimes, and alot of people look at us when we're signing, we just look back and continue to do so when they finally turn their head.

It's true when they say, if you lose a sense, your other senses rise.

In deaf and hard of hearing people's cases, our eyes senses rise much higher, we are able to look at people in the corner of our eye very easily and clearly.

So even when they turn their head, alot of then turn back instantly and look in their corner of their eyes and still try to keep their eyes on us.

I am the only guy in the group of friends that can speak, so most of the time my friends order and just point to the menu. Details are sorted out, for example if a friend wants his eggs scrambled or sunny side up, its hard to get the waitress to understand how they want it, it can get frustrating and confusing. At a dinner, its hard for them to explain how they would like their meat cooked. A buddy of mine likes his meat medium rare, imagine how hard that is to explain to a waitress that knows no sign language whatsoever.

Alot of times they use the pens of the waitresses to write something, or tell me to tell the waitress how they would like their food.

I do remember a waitress at Denny's after going to a bar one night, she knew how to finger spell. So that made it easier for my friends.

They should require waitresses to at least know how to finger spell.......fuck. Its not that hard and its only 26 letters. People in prison learn how to fingerspell things, so they can talk to each other from far places.....its not for good purposes but it shows you that even convicts learn the alphabet, so why cant a bunch of waitresses?

 

[society's_child]

society's_child,

I attended my first get together of a Deaf Chat Coffee today. We had 15 or so folks. Talked/signed/wrote for nearly 3 1/2 hours. It was great and I learned a lot. I am losing my hearing and hear about 30% of spoken words with hearing aids IF there is no background noise (HoH).

My advise to y'all might be to take paper and pencil.

I wrote and had terp assistance. I'm learning ASL. We had a blast!

Dave

I'd like to attend one of those chats sometime. I need the exposure. I'd probably just get wired on the caffeine, lol.

 

[Interpretrator]

why cant a bunch of waitresses?

Realistically? Many wait staff are single parents and/or going to school and/or working more than one job and to ask them to learn another language or part of one on top of all that as well as their regular, pretty crappy, duties isn't really fair. Convicts have a LOT of time to sit around and learn things.

Healthcare workers, law enforcement...yes, these should be required to at least know fingerspelling, I agree. And in a perfect world EVERYONE would know at least fingerspelling if not other basic sign. But I think waitresses can be let off the hook.

(Sorry to derail the thread.)

 

[gnarlydorkette]

Sympathetic...?

and I don't recollect that any of my dinners was a hassle ...

I don't know if because I am Deaf but I feel a bit offended that your professor wants you to feel sorry that it is a hassle to not able to speak at all.

Some professors are just off-the-wall.

************BACK TO THE THREAD

We don't exactly have "Silent Dinners"... we do have DPHH (Deaf Professionals Happy Hour) which is for Deaf adults who will just chat and chat until the resturant has to kick us out. RARE to see ASL students there (thank goodness) because the level of ASL is too high for the novices to come in.

The ASL students around here usually attend Deaf Coffee Chat nights or Deaf Bowling where there are various levels of signers (Deaf/Hearing) for the ASL students to mingle with.

 

[Chuck]

Its only the alphabet, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.

26 hand signs, even little kids can learn this stuff in a short time.

 

[jillio]

Sympathetic...?

and I don't recollect that any of my dinners was a hassle ...

I don't know if because I am Deaf but I feel a bit offended that your professor wants you to feel sorry that it is a hassle to not able to speak at all.

Some professors are just off-the-wall.

************BACK TO THE THREAD

We don't exactly have "Silent Dinners"... we do have DPHH (Deaf Professionals Happy Hour) which is for Deaf adults who will just chat and chat until the resturant has to kick us out. RARE to see ASL students there (thank goodness) because the level of ASL is too high for the novices to come in.

The ASL students around here usually attend Deaf Coffee Chat nights or Deaf Bowling where there are various levels of signers (Deaf/Hearing) for the ASL students to mingle with.

Agreed! Too many hearing ASL professors demonstrate such a patronizing attitude toward the Deaf. We have an ASL prof on campus that irritates the S*** out of me with that attitude. I told her if she is training interpreters and they show up to interpret with her attitude, they will offend people and have a helluva time keeping a job.

 

[ismi]

We don't exactly have "Silent Dinners"... we do have DPHH (Deaf Professionals Happy Hour) which is for Deaf adults who will just chat and chat until the resturant has to kick us out. RARE to see ASL students there (thank goodness) because the level of ASL is too high for the novices to come in.

I've been to a few DPHHs as an ASL student, although it's true that the level of ASL is mostly over my head (my experience has been that I'll generally have a brief conversation with a few people, but also spend a lot of time just observing - I've found that even when I can't follow everything, seeing what bits I can understand helps a lot, not just in ASL but in spoken languages I'm studying). Is this crossing a boundary that I should not? I've never felt unwelcome, and I tend to drop out of the conversation when it goes beyond where I can follow rather than continuously asking for clarification, but I'd appreciate your input here. I am HOH; does that make any difference?

 

[gnarlydorkette]

I've been to a few DPHHs as an ASL student, although it's true that the level of ASL is mostly over my head (my experience has been that I'll generally have a brief conversation with a few people, but also spend a lot of time just observing - I've found that even when I can't follow everything, seeing what bits I can understand helps a lot, not just in ASL but in spoken languages I'm studying). Is this crossing a boundary that I should not? I've never felt unwelcome, and I tend to drop out of the conversation when it goes beyond where I can follow rather than continuously asking for clarification, but I'd appreciate your input here. I am HOH; does that make any difference?

No you are not overstepping your boundary. You are handling yourself well that you are not imposing yourself on others. That is better than you expecting the Deaf people to hold your hands through conversations. You are just observing and let the natural language of ASL occuring which is good-- rather than forcing the level of ASL to adjust just FOR you. This will enable the Deaf and fluent signers to be used to you and more willing to help you to understand by summarizing for you. Just leave the help to them to decide whether they want to extend. Most of the times, DPHH are the places for Deaf/Fluent signers to come and unwind where they don't have to adjust their levels for novices to understand. They want to talk in natural environemnts. They probably don't mind being observing-- after all, everybody is used to be stared at. ;-)

 

[society's_child]

Sympathetic...?

and I don't recollect that any of my dinners was a hassle ...

I don't know if because I am Deaf but I feel a bit offended that your professor wants you to feel sorry that it is a hassle to not able to speak at all.

Sorry, his words, not mine. Don't shoot the messenger.
:rl:

He doesn't seem to be conveying patronizing attitude towards deaf people during class but then again, perhaps I'm just not "reading" him too well. :-?

 

[jillio]

Sorry, his words, not mine. Don't shoot the messenger.
:rl:

He doesn't seem to be conveying patronizing attitude towards deaf people during class but then again, perhaps I'm just not "reading" him too well. :-?

Maybe we just have different ideas of patronizing. When someone tries to teach those who have no experience with Deaf culture, and they make a statement that even eating dinner is a hassel, I find that a bit patronizing. No Deaf I know has a problem eating dinner, they do it the same way a hearing person does. I'd rather eat dinner with a deaf person who signs while eating that with a hearing person who talks with food in their mouth!!

 

[society's_child]

Maybe we just have different ideas of patronizing. When someone tries to teach those who have no experience with Deaf culture, and they make a statement that even eating dinner is a hassel, I find that a bit patronizing. No Deaf I know has a problem eating dinner, they do it the same way a hearing person does. I'd rather eat dinner with a deaf person who signs while eating that with a hearing person who talks with food in their mouth!!

Understood. My apologies if I came across as rude. That's really not my style.

 

[Interpretrator]

26 hand signs, even little kids can learn this stuff in a short time.

First of all, little kids are immensely better at learning any kind of language than adults are. See Chomsky's "critical age" hypothesis. Secondly, if they must learn fingerspelling, then why not every other language out there? To make it fair, in my area they would have to know 26 words in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Armenian, Korean, Tagalog...and that's just off the top of my head.

I'm sorry, I of course agree that it would be wonderful if more people knew some amount of sign, but making it a requirement for waitstaff is unrealistic.

I'd rather eat dinner with a deaf person who signs while eating that with a hearing person who talks with food in their mouth!!

Heh, my technique when eating with signers is to take BIG bites since I never know when the next opportunity will come for me to pick up my fork. And then of course signing with your mouth full isn't too much of an issue (unless you laugh).

 

[RDC_girl]

I wish my ASL midterm was like that! My midterm is next wednesday. It is three parts, we have to watch a video and write down what is being said, then the second part we need to have 16 sentences that we have to sign and then the third and final part is we have a one on one conversation with our instructor. Shouldnt be to bad but still it seems harder than a silent dinner. lol

How did your silent dinner go? How did you do?

 

[Gobae]

We had a Silent Dinner as the "final" for our ASL 3 class. The teacher did this for a couple of reasons. One, so we had an understanding how even some typical events were different for Deaf people. Two, so we could use the ASL we learned in a real world setting.

I must say, our Silent Dinner showed us quite clearly all the areas where our ASL was lacking. There was simply a LOT of vocabularly we still hadn't learned.

Over all it was a fantastic event and the other students were great and followed the "no voice" rule closely.

 

[society's_child]

I wish my ASL midterm was like that! My midterm is next wednesday. It is three parts, we have to watch a video and write down what is being said, then the second part we need to have 16 sentences that we have to sign and then the third and final part is we have a one on one conversation with our instructor. Shouldnt be to bad but still it seems harder than a silent dinner. lol

How did your silent dinner go? How did you do?

Oh, i didn't happen yet. But when it does I'll be sure to talk about it.

 

[RDC_girl]

cant wait to hear how it goes, I will let you know how mine goes lol