Im at a loss!
Well, Sign Language is finished now till September, and im at a loss as to what to do! sounds silly, but im afraid of forgetting it, I have 10 weeks done, and its amazing just how much I learned in that time!
In college it handy in the sence that Adrian is there and I can sign to him, but its not an everyday occurance, and Keith, my better half, wants to learn and I cant wait to show him, but we never seem to get around to it!!
There is nobody I can get to do classes with me over the summer, although Susan my lecturer seems adament to meet up with me and practice which is great if it happens, she is very busy most of the time, and sometimes i wonder if we will ever actually meet up over the summer, but i guess ill see!
My hearing aids are going ok, but its strange as they amplify everything including background noise, I still cant hear the person im talking to, its very confusing. But I have learnt, strangely enough, ? the value of the quietness that is my hearing loss, at the end of a long day of concentrating and using the hearing aids, turning them off is really nice 
April 26th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
That feeling of turning them off is so good…
I know I won’t be the only person here to sympathise a lot over the problem with hearing aids – that they amplify everything rather than just the bits we might want. Tonight I’ve been at a big party (the University Music Society Ball – it was great fun) where that caused quite a lot of ear-pain, as you can imagine. Coming home and just being able to switch off was a lovely thing to be able to do.
April 27th, 2006 at 7:07 am
yeah I love the feeling of taking them out, I never realised ur ear canal could sweat!!! EWWWWW!
April 27th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
You might want to check out the CACDP website for BSL/ISL products. Some are quite expensive, but might be worth it if you continue with classes and stuff. Either that, or the place you did sign should have some of these in their library that you can borrow for practice.
Oh the CACDP website stinks. Half the links don’t work. The trick is to go to the site-map at the bottom and navigate from there. Stupid broken frameset and stuff. The products page can be found at http://www.cacdp.org.uk/Information/Scripts/publications.html Although all those look expensive, so I’d probably go and borrow them from somewhere.
Go to the local deaf club, find out what nights have events and how often they occur. Our deaf club has normal night on Wednesday which can be very quiet - sometimes just BSL students which is annoying. Saturday night is Bingo night (I know I know) which is apparently very well attended. I’ve yet to try a Saturday night, maybe if my mum isn’t still here I’ll try this week.
Consider doing classes (if available) without anyone else, you will almost certainly soon make friends. See if anyone from your existing class is willing to meet up whenever to practice sign. I’d definitely recommend that Keith does some classes as well as whatever you can teach him, it’s easier once you have a focus.
Other suggestions which I find annoying are ‘make some deaf friends’ (cos didn’tcha know if you want to learn sign you make friends with someone to do it!) and hang around with deaf people. I don’t have many deaf friends, only people I’d have been friends with anyway, who happen to be deaf. I should spend more time at deaf club though, and see if anyone interesting turns up. While avoiding the nice, but ‘needy’ bloke who will monopolise people’s time till they go mad!
As for hearing aids, know what you mean about background noise. That is one of the main difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘aided hearing’ - which few people realise, and even fewer actually understand. Are there any directional mic, or background cutting programmes on it accessible by a switch or whatever? DO talk to your audiologist at your review appointment about the background noise (they should have given you an appt for a few weeks time to finetune if needed) as they may be able to fiddle with the settings. Although in my experience the ‘background noise’ programme on my aids is shite, makes everything mushy and annoying. It is a cognitive thing being able to pull desired speech out of background noise - which is where lipreading still helps a great deal.
I turn my aids off quite a lot, I don’t think I could live without my almost-silence anymore. This is why I consider written English to be my best language, followed by speech&hearing followed by sign. We have ADSL, computers on all the time and I use online chat systems to talk to friends and even kim in the same room.
April 29th, 2006 at 4:02 am
yeah I have an appt. with a lady at, NAD, national Deaf Asst. and ill find out about learning products from her, but about the Deaf club, I wont be welcommed, I was told by dympna, my sign tutor, she said as im not completely deaf, and have full speech, and only a little sign, they will actually bully!! sounds childish, but apparently over here deaf clubs are for Deaf only, deaf from birth! its lousy and very closed minded if that is the case! but soon enough I probably will be completely deaf or there abouts!
April 29th, 2006 at 4:20 am
NAD sounds great, let us know how that goes.
The deaf club thing if actually as your tutor says is outrageous! How can the _D_eaf purist minority be so oppressive towards people wanting to learn their language for good reasons such as *cough* deafness! How the hell are people supposed to get good enough at ISL to become sign language interpretors - should they want to be? For all the _D_eaf purist posing as ‘non-disabled’ and a ‘Culture’ they still need and rely upon hearing people choosing to work as interpretors between their ’superior’ language and English/Irish to have equality in many ways! How do they know if you are deaf from birth or not? How dare they divide based upon a choice which most people deaf from birth and oral did not choose! *Let me at them!*
Yes we have the whole _D_eaf politics crap here, but in real life most _D_eaf are actually quite welcoming to deafened, oral deaf and even non-patronising hearing people (non patronising left as an exercise for the reader) - especially those willing to learn some sign. Yes some clubs don’t like pre BSL level 1 people, but in my experience if you are deaf and you try, don’t monopolise people and show progress and shared interests then people are generally fine even when you know about 5 signs. I think the real purists who don’t like us will stay quiet rather than actually attack as they realise they do kind of need the ‘Oralies’ on their side. They want ex-oralists to boost their often legitimate arguments against some aspects of oralism for some deaf people.
I’ll ask on the D-UK (which has some outspoke Irish folk who might not flame me) if there is a suitable social gathering that a deafened person starting sign classes could go to for extra support and practice. There are often deaf pub gatherings for younger people which are less segregationist and more willing to accept a wider range of signing types. I’ll let you know if I get anything useful out of them.
April 29th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
ur the best natalia thank you, and Id love to let you at them!!
on an other note, I asked Dympna about becomming an interpreter, and unfortunatly, as im considered severely deaf now, ill never be alloued to train as a terp!! meh, but at least I can look to sign as a new skill, its wonderful and im glad to have it, tho im not fluent, I hopefully will be one day
April 30th, 2006 at 9:44 am
You may be able to work as a deaf interpreter doing TV work and the like. A lot of the people signing BSL on TV are deaf themselves, they are qualified interpreters who work from the script directly rather than translating what they hear in audio.
I know the BSL Deaf community is kicking off to make the BSL-English/Interpreting courses more deaf accessible. The University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) has recently announced the beginning of a degree in BSL which is taught in BSL so no terps needed
I’m aiming for fluency, it’ll take me a while I think, but it is worth doing. I really hope I pass level 2 and can go onto level 3 classes - I was bored through most of level 2, cos it was too slow in places, and confusing in others. I really needed to read about sign linguistics before I could follow the grammar properly.
I haven’t had the chance to ask D-UK about Irish stuff (I’ll do it when awake later) as I’ve been helping my mum with her CV and last essay evah for her ‘Teacher of the Deaf’ training course. Which reminds me, if you train as a teacher and want to work with deaf kids you can definitely be a teacher of the deaf if you are deaf - it is now politically ‘in’ again for the deaf children to see deaf role models. Maybe something for your future
April 30th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
yeah, I deafinatly am doing the whole teacher thing, tho Im aming probably to work in main stream schools, but to have sign language by then will expand my skills so I can work with D/deaf kids and I would love that so much too
well im into level 1 in september now that I have the 10 weeks of basic finished, I cant wait for it, im still hunting more info on if I can do something over the summer, but we’ll see my appt. with NAD is 10am Tuesday and I wond stop asking questions!! Best news is they will pay for me to learn sign from now on, I wont have to pay a thing, which is wonderful as it is all part of my constant learning and that it helps me in art college too 
so some good news,
and thanks for all the advice
May 1st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
NAD paying for your sign is great! I’m really impressed. I paid about £150 for my level one, was unemployed during the signup for both level 2 years so didn’t end up paying £450. Level 3 runs for 3 years at a cost of about £600 total + whatever you have to pay for materials…
In England at least different colleges choose their payment structure, some will give you a reduction in fees if you are deaf, have a deaf partner or child but I don’t think mine does. Although I’m told the level 3 course is very good - so we shall see (if I pass my level 2 exam). There is very little sponsorship for deaf people to learn sign, something which even the die dard _D_eaf brigade are willing to kickoff about.
Talking of _D_eaf… I asked on D-UK and got quite a few helpful replies which I will summarise:
Online Deaf Irish places
http://groups.msn.com/irishdeafbuddies
http://www.irishdeaf.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deaf-ireland/ (I’ve joined this, am awaiting moderator approval)
Useful websites for ISL learning
http://www.nadi.ie/nadp/asp/section.asp?s=1 (wasn’t sure if you had seen their website, it’s a bit broken currently, but has better ISL product information than the *spit* CACDP.
There seems to be a guy called Shane Buckley who is some kind of community/volunteer type, someone asked if you’d been in touch with him - smacks of ‘everyone in Ireland knows everyone else in Ireland’
I’ve asked for contact details for you.
The other comments from D-UK members were:
Tell your friend to go.
In all walk of life, you’ll always get wonderful people, and at the same
time, you’ll get utter wankers. It’s a law
So tell your friend to ignore the utter wankers and focus on the
wonderful people
and
deaf people always have trouble when they first join Dublin’s deaf
community if not through Cabra (i.e. they go to deaf schools at Cabra
etc) - but I can imagine it ll be less difficult outside Dublin i.e.
Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Cork, Newry etc because of the smaller
size.
Irish people tend to be more negative anyway about life itself so your
friend should not get worked up about the whole package etc
The latter came from the very vocally Irish guy who I was hoping would reply.
So in summary I think the consensus has been that you should definitely give it a go. Maybe do what I did when I came to Sheffield, join Irish Deaf mailing lists, introduce yourself in an intro post - explain that you have been losing your hearing since childhood, are wanting to learn more ISL and be part of the Deaf Community etc etc. (I’d avoid saying you want to work with deaf kids until people know you better)
That way if you go to the Deaf Club there may be a few people you know from online anyway, who might be supportive and welcoming. Certainly I found people recognised me from the mailing list and made a lot of effort to be nice.
You don’t have to stay all night at Deaf Club, even 30 mins little and often is better than 2 hours where you tire yourself (and everyone else) out
. Hopefully those mailing lists should throw up other maybe easier to join Deaf events.
May 1st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
NAD paying for your sign is great! I’m really impressed. I paid about £150 for my level one, was unemployed during the signup for both level 2 years so didn’t end up paying £450. Level 3 runs for 3 years at a cost of about £600 total + whatever you have to pay for materials…
In England at least different colleges choose their payment structure, some will give you a reduction in fees if you are deaf, have a deaf partner or child but I don’t think mine does. Although I’m told the level 3 course is very good - so we shall see (if I pass my level 2 exam). There is very little sponsorship for deaf people to learn sign, something which even the die dard _D_eaf brigade are willing to kickoff about.
Talking of _D_eaf… I asked on D-UK and got quite a few helpful replies which I will summarise:
Online Deaf Irish places
http://groups.msn.com/irishdeafbuddies
http://www.irishdeaf.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deaf-ireland/ (I’ve joined this, am awaiting moderator approval)
Useful websites for ISL learning
http://www.nadi.ie/nadp/asp/section.asp?s=1 (wasn’t sure if you had seen their website, it’s a bit broken currently, but has better ISL product information than the *spit* CACDP.
There seems to be a guy called Shane Buckley who is some kind of community/volunteer type, someone asked if you’d been in touch with him - smacks of ‘everyone in Ireland knows everyone else in Ireland’
I’ve asked for contact details for you.
The other comments from D-UK members were:
Tell your friend to go.
In all walk of life, you’ll always get wonderful people, and at the same
time, you’ll get utter wankers. It’s a law
So tell your friend to ignore the utter wankers and focus on the
wonderful people
and
deaf people always have trouble when they first join Dublin’s deaf
community if not through Cabra (i.e. they go to deaf schools at Cabra
etc) - but I can imagine it ll be less difficult outside Dublin i.e.
Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Cork, Newry etc because of the smaller
size.
Irish people tend to be more negative anyway about life itself so your
friend should not get worked up about the whole package etc
The latter came from the very vocally Irish guy who I was hoping would reply.
So in summary I think the consensus has been that you should definitely give it a go. Maybe do what I did when I came to Sheffield, join Irish Deaf mailing lists, introduce yourself in an intro post - explain that you have been losing your hearing since childhood, are wanting to learn more ISL and be part of the Deaf Community etc etc. (I’d avoid saying you want to work with deaf kids until people know you better)
That way if you go to the Deaf Club there may be a few people you know from online anyway, who might be supportive and welcoming. Certainly I found people recognised me from the mailing list and made a lot of effort to be nice.
You don’t have to stay all night at Deaf Club, even 30 mins little and often is better than 2 hours where you tire yourself (and everyone else) out
. Hopefully those mailing lists should throw up other maybe easier to join Deaf events.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:51 am
w00t ur the best, this Shane Buckley, someone asked him if id been in tough with him???? who asked?? perhaps im reading that rong!!but thatks so much for the links