Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

American Sign Language 102

Korrin B.

February 7, 2010 - 11:00 PM

As I've said before, I love my class in American Sign Language. This is my second term taking the class with Jo Larson. Jo is an amazing instructor and really makes the class more than just a language class, but also a look into the culture of deafness. These are some of the ways in which we have gotten to further explore the topic this term.

Guest Speakers
During one of our classes this term, we had three different guest speakers come in to talk to us. Each of them was a mother of a deaf child. However, they were each from different generations, which was very interesting. The first speaker had her child about forty years ago, the next about twenty years ago, and the third only about five years ago. It was fascinating talking to them and learning about how the resources available to parents of deaf children have changed and how technology is now affecting the culture of the Deaf community.

Movies
We got to watch a movie called "Sound and Fury." This movie was a documentary that followed around a deaf family as they tried to decide whether to get their daughter a cochlear implant. It was interesting to watch how the family worried that the implant would makes the Deaf culture disappear or would make their daughter feel less connected to them. I didn't know that so many Deaf people are worried about the new technology of the cochlear implant taking away their identity.

Readings
We all just finished reading a novel called Deaf Like Me by James Spradley. This book talked about how a family dealt with finding out that their baby was deaf in the seventies and their journey to finding sign language as a way to finally be able to communicate. It was a nice addition to the class and I was so happy in the end when the family finally started using sign language with each other instead of trying to force only oral education onto their daughter, which wasn't working very well at all.

I'm looking forward to spring term of this class as well and also to my second year of the language sequence next year.