jillio
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As we have gotten into discussions regarding this subject I thought I'd post a quote from "The Other Side Of Silence" and see what your feelings are regarding it. I personally find it to be a wonderful explanation of why the MCE systems are so cumbersome and tiring to watch, and why ASL seems to be more fluid and not as tiring. I've tried to explain it before, but Neisser does a much better job than I.
"While there is a great deal of disagreement about whether these artificial languages (MCE systems) are useful for teaching, it is certain that no signed version of any spoken language has ever become the ordinary, everyday language of a deaf community. The most obvious reason is probably the difference in mode.
Spoken language is received by the ear in a stream of sound signals, one after the other, in sequence, over time. The ear is specialized for receiving this kind of information, the eye is not. The eye is adapted for picking up large chunks of information: sees many things in the visual field, simultaneously occuring as well as ongoing events. Manual languages for the deaf evolved to take advantage of the visual mode, and are based on a positive use of vision rather than on a negative functioning of the ear.
PSE produces a rather bare English sentence adorned with ASL signs and a large number of fingerspelled English words. It is not comparable either to natural pidgins (where neither party knows the other's language) norr is it comparable with standard foreign language interpretation (where neither party knows the other's language, but the interpreter knows both). In sign language interpretation, the interpreter may know both ASL and English, but the deaf client must know English. It is the only kind of interpreting that assumes a client is competent in both languages.
"it is really the deaf students who do the interpeting. What they get doesn't make much sense unless they do some translating'. (Speaking of PSE).
'What do they translate into? English or ASL?'
'English. If they are given a good interpretation, close to ASL,they don't have to do anything, they just understand directly. Go right to the meaning. But if they've gotten a garbled English sentence (through PSE), they have to try to put it into English, and sometimes translate it into ASL in their heads before they get any idea what it means."
I think this points out the problems of using one of the MCE's rather than taking a bi-bi approach in education. What do you think?
"While there is a great deal of disagreement about whether these artificial languages (MCE systems) are useful for teaching, it is certain that no signed version of any spoken language has ever become the ordinary, everyday language of a deaf community. The most obvious reason is probably the difference in mode.
Spoken language is received by the ear in a stream of sound signals, one after the other, in sequence, over time. The ear is specialized for receiving this kind of information, the eye is not. The eye is adapted for picking up large chunks of information: sees many things in the visual field, simultaneously occuring as well as ongoing events. Manual languages for the deaf evolved to take advantage of the visual mode, and are based on a positive use of vision rather than on a negative functioning of the ear.
PSE produces a rather bare English sentence adorned with ASL signs and a large number of fingerspelled English words. It is not comparable either to natural pidgins (where neither party knows the other's language) norr is it comparable with standard foreign language interpretation (where neither party knows the other's language, but the interpreter knows both). In sign language interpretation, the interpreter may know both ASL and English, but the deaf client must know English. It is the only kind of interpreting that assumes a client is competent in both languages.
"it is really the deaf students who do the interpeting. What they get doesn't make much sense unless they do some translating'. (Speaking of PSE).
'What do they translate into? English or ASL?'
'English. If they are given a good interpretation, close to ASL,they don't have to do anything, they just understand directly. Go right to the meaning. But if they've gotten a garbled English sentence (through PSE), they have to try to put it into English, and sometimes translate it into ASL in their heads before they get any idea what it means."
I think this points out the problems of using one of the MCE's rather than taking a bi-bi approach in education. What do you think?