A trip to " Sekolah Menengah Pendidikan Khas Vokasional Shah Alam"

On the 13/03/2013, our school of Education has organised a trip to a special needs school in Shah Alam. We were told to wait at the bus stop near Pangkor hall before 7.15am. It took us almost one hour to reach the school. This is my first time going to a special needs school in Malaysia. My first impression of the school is so big and has many building blocks.

Aftethat, me and my classmates( First Years), Second Year Students and our lecturers were assisted by Ms. Pravina, a teacher of the school. We went to the teacher's meeting room, and were introduced to the principal and she gave her speech about the school. In addition, we were given a school brochure by Ms.Pravina, to know more about the school ,what are the programmes being offered in the school and how does the school evaluate students performance. Then, we had a Q & A session, where we get to ask questions regarding the school. From that discussion, I can see that the school is only for students who are blind, students with hearing impairment and learning disabilities. There was one part where one of the teachers pointed out that this school is only for the "deaf and dumb" and then she quickly changed her mind. I was shocked to hear that the term "dumb" because I found it a very offensive and sad to hear that some people still used that "negative term" in today's society. Another thing is the school only used two sign languages. There are Manually Coded Malay (KTBM) and American Sign Language(ASL). According to one of the teachers, students who perform well in their studies, they will sent to a special needs school in Penang. One of my peers raised a question that " do students here create their own language to communicate with their friends". They responded by saying that students do create their own language to communicate whether there are in their dorms and in the classroom itself.

Moreover, this school offered seven programmes such as  7 courses such as cooking, builders, welding, hair saloon, automotive engine, housekeeping, learn about making dresses and blouses, and learn how to create images on posters or even making  scrapbooks. Ms. Pravina gave us a tour to explore the classrooms and have a look on what are the students there are studying. The one thing that amazed me was the school had apple computers for children to design and make posters and the another thing was the silk cloth designs and the clothes made by the students was absolutely amazing to look at.

Ms. Pravina took us around the school and she showed us the students dorms( girls and boys dorms separately), the football court and the school field. At the end of the day, we took a group photo and left the school. Above all, it was an unforgettable experience.


Here are some pictures:

 

 

Handbags, photoframes, drawings of silk patterns made by the students

 

 

 

Students artwork.

Students have to study the Electrical System

 

 

 

 

HouseKeeping

 

Hair Saloon

Builders

A Memorable Experience( UNHCR Refugee School)

On 1/7/2013,  we gathered at FIA11 to welcome the Myammar Refugee kids, aged 5 to 17 years. When they arrived, the Education students assisted them to their seats. When I first look at those kids, I was thinking "Are those kids really from a Refugee School?". Because you can see, by the way they dressed, some of them even wearing their headphones on, and others having cool mobile phones. Then, we move on with the ice-breaking games, where we get to know the children names and we also get to dance and sing  along with the song called "If You Happy and You Know It". It seems that many of the kids could not understand and communicate in English, so luckily they have a translator who can translate for them. Afterthat, we get the kids to split into groups of five. These five groups represented by colour, which are orange, green, yellow, pink and blue. According to the article that I've read, the third move in the I-R-F exchange structure where the "I" represents the initiating move, such as the question that's being posed by the teacher. The "R" is the response from the class and "F" is the follow-up comment by the teacher(Cullen, 2002). Upon my experience with the Myammar Refugee Kids, I was helping the little ones to put on their colour wristbrands and I try to communicate with them, they is no response. Therefore, no follow up and I-R-F does not exist. Some of the kids could not speak English, so I have to use gestures to communicate with them.

                                        

                                         

The Scavenger hunt team will take their group of kids to places where the station games are. The station games consist of  four games:

• Traffic Light Game
• Building Bridge with Newspapers
• Blindfold Game
• Loop News Paper Game

 



 

 

 

The Kids :)

                                          

While the kids busy playing with the station games, me and my  other two friends Flora and Agnes are part of the Indoor Games Group. So, we went to F3B08, to arrange the chairs and set up the music for the "Musical Chairs" games. Then, when the kids arrived at 10.10am, one of the Education students gave instructions regarding the activities. I was in charge of playing the music. I chose two different songs and mash them up together. The songs I chose were High School Musical- We all in this together and The Wanted-Chasing The Sun. I was consider  to be the "DJ" of the event. The kids really had so much fun playing Musical Chairs and then we move on to "Rock,Paper, Scissors Game". My classmate Phoebe, gave instructions and she and I demonstrate how to play this game. I  had a good laugh when I was playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors Game" with Kay, and she was so excited and thought she won the game. Hahaha :)

 

 

                                                                    

 

   

 

High School Musical- We're all in this together

 

 

 

 

The Wanted-Chasing The Sun

 

 

 





 After the games, we took the kids to the Nottingham Adminstration Building to have refreshments.  While having our refreshments, I chatted with one of the kids and it seems that she could speak English very well compare to other kids. There is IRF, where I initiate by asking a question such as "Hi, what is your name?". She responds by saying her name and there is a follow up, where I said "Oh, I mention her name again, and said things like nice to meet you. Then, we took a group photo and they left the University. It is sad for us to see the kids go, one of my classmate almost cried and refuse to see the kids go. It was an unforgettable experience for me and my classmate, as we had a lot of fun when these kids are around and they just made us feel young again. There were really wonderful and we missed them. Hopefully, we get to see them in the future.

 

 

On the next activity, I would like to join the Scavenger Hunt Team, to get to know the kids well, engage in conversations, ask questions, and more importantly, play together with them. I would want to achieve IRF, an effective tool for interpersonal communication.

 

References:

 

Cullen,R.(2002).Supportive teacher talk:the importance of the F-move. Oxford University Press,56(2), 117-127.

 

 

 

 





 

 

 

 

   

 

A Letter to Ms.Ho Koon Wei

Dear Ms.Ho,

I’m Sonia, a Year 1 Undergraduate Student from the School of Education. I’m grateful to meet and listen to your presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation the other day. This is my first time meeting and listening a Deaf lecturer giving a wonderful presentation on   “Learning and Living: A Deaf speaker. Your delivery was so engaging that I lost all track of time. I was so amazed to see your friend (the sign language translator) was translating very fast especially the way she uses her hand gestures and translating in sign language.  I was really impressed to see u and your friend (the sign language translator) being cooperative and communicate very professionally.

Before this, I didn’t have any understanding about how the language is learned and I didn’t know that without hearing it is almost impossible to learn to speak. I was also unclear about the term labeled as “Deaf and Dumb” and why does that “label” exist in the society, which to me it sounds horrible and it is very offensive. After hearing your presentation, I learnt a lot about deaf people lives and the differences between pre-lingual deafness and post-lingual deafness. Another thing that I would like to say, that before this I had this question on what language do deaf people used to communicate?. How do they think? I had the impression that they thought "with their hands," not with the feeling of hand movements (if I got that right). Your presentation on the language of Deaf had given me a clear picture that deaf communities make their own language and sign language, is their first language. When they master their own native sign language, they could easily learn other sign languages.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to learn a lot about deaf people lives. It is really an eye-opening experience for me.

 

Regards,

Sonia

Year 1 Undergraduate Student.

A Special Talk on "Learning and Living: A Deaf Perspective".

On the 19/2/2013, we had two guest speakers came down to the Univesity of Nottingham Malaysia Campus  to hold a talk  on " Learning and Living: A Deaf Perspective". They are Ms. Ho Koon Wei, a deaf speaker who comes  from University of Malaya together with her sign-language translator. During the talk, I was impressed to see  Ms. Ho, a deaf speaker presented her talk very professionally and her sign language translator was  translating  really fast especially  the way she uses her hand gestures and translating in sign language to explain what Ms. Ho is saying. Besides, in this talk,  I learnt about deaf culture, what are the causes of hearing loss and and the interesting thing was there are many different types of sign language used. Some countries has their own sign language and there are also international sign language. Moreover, this was  my first experience of seeing and listening to a Deaf speaker presenting her talk and it was truly a memorable and unforgetable experience I've ever had.  Before this, I don't know what is like to be deaf,  or what is their culture, identity and the language.

There is this article that I've read by Audrei Gesser, a German who visited a place called Gallaudet University, which  is also known as the "Land of the Deaf". The reason she

 came to this place is to learn about the Deaf people lives, culture, identity,etc(Gesser, 2007). I decided to do a little bit of research on Gallaudet University, and found out that it is a quiet campus ,it is a  place where students could speak the unspoken language of deaf America and everyone understands the culture of Deaf in that place.

Upon my first experience, before this I always wonder how does deaf people speak or practice their speech?. I remember that Ms.Ho together with her sign language translator said that deaf people are not mute , but they chose not to speak for various reasons. She also said that deaf people would learn to speak aloud.

                                                   

( According to Lane, Hoffmeister, and Bahan,1996) stated that language has three roles in bonding a group of speakers to one another and to their culture. Language is also known as a symbol of social identity,a medium of social interaction, and a store of cultural knowledge(Gesser,2007). However, the language of Deaf is known as a visual language and the use of gestures or facial expressions. This language is created by the Deaf comunity to be shared among Deaf community. There are so many ways to learn sign language. Ms.Ho demonstrated many sign languages such as American, British, France, Malay...etc.  Since Ms.Ho is from Malaysia, she uses BIM Manually coded, which was invented by the hearing people and to share with other Malaysian Deaf Communities.

Based on the article, the writer is not proficient in ASL sign language in Gallaudet University but she said that deaf people could understand him by using written communication. She said that she  used her oral mode in English to communicate, despite English is a foreign language to her. The thing she did was she develped a strategy of speechreading in English because she noticed that Deaf people at the Gallaudet University frequently mouthed in English. The writer is going to use this strategy until sheis proficient in ASL(Gesser,2007). In my opinion, I think that is a good idea. If I were the writer who is visiting Gallaudet University, I would do exactly the same because speechreading helps us to communicate with the deaf and Hard of Hearing people.

 

 

This is an example of American Sign Language(ASL)

 

In the article, I noticed that hearing people communicate with other hearing people using simultaneous communication(SIMCOM). In the Gallaudet University context, hearing people is more on a political-ideological issue, which they have their own space. Moreover, the writer also mention the Signed Exact English( SEE), where this reflects what Ms. Ho's says that (SEE) is a method  that Deaf people used sign words exactly as they used in the English Language. Ms. Ho even gave us an example of an English sentence and sign words sentence to show the differences.

 

Example : I am going to school( English Sentence)

Me going to school( sign words sentence).

 

 

 

Deaf Culture

When we think about "deaf culture", and we see that there is a huge barrier dividing hearing people and people who are deaf, and the only thing that splits these two groups apart is the communication.
 A Deaf Culture is referring to social beliefs, behaviours, values, history and institutions that are shared among the Deaf communities, who communicate by using sign language. In the cultural context, the term "deaf" is sometimes written with a big D(Deaf), meaning sign and speech. Based on the article I've read, the writer talks about a hearing person, who could use ASL proficiently said that the writer have to use ASL because many Deaf people are proficient in ASL. This reflects back to the culture that is practicing by the Deaf communities. I belief that many hearing people feel that there  are many hearing people who are socially accepted into the Deaf Community because of their willingness to adopt those beliefs that's been practiced within the community.

 Since Deaf people in Gallaudet's beliefs on political-ideological correctness, Deaf people have a sense of political correctness and a feeling of identification with Deaf people to be proficient in ASL(Gesser,2007).

 

There are two types of hearing people. One is hearing people especially those people who are more proficient in ASL, and the other hearing people who is less or not proficient in ASL. The hearing people who are proficient in ASL become the oppressors to the ones who is not proficient in ASL because they would show off that they could speak  sign language fluently and they do not care whether the hearing people who are not fluent can understand them or not. This is different from the Deaf people because they are willing to help and they would want to communicate.  In my opinion, I think it is very frustrating to see Hearing people who are proficient in the sign language  act and behave this way and it shows that many Deaf people think that they are inferior to this subordinate group( hearing people), therefore they believed that they are less capable of articulating their own

standpoint.

 

Throughout the talk, I  learnt that how Deaf People learn a second and first language. We know that their first language is sign language. Ms.Ho said that deaf people apply L1-L2 learning process. I also learnt that they could learn Bahasa Malaysia and English as their Second Language.  She said that if Deaf people could master the BIM Language, they could easily learn other foreign sign language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on the writer's observation, he noticed that when most Deaf people came to Gallaudet, they feel that there were part of the minorities in prestige and number as they have no clue or experience before. This shows that there is a reverse in social dynamic, social roles, positions and social statues within the Deaf community(Gesser, 2007). So, it is hard for a Deaf person to be socially accepted  in the community because of the behaviour practices, culture that is set  in Gallaudet. The writer also emphasize that he sees that the Deaf people associate among themselves and the hearing people would form in groups. The one thing that I've found it shocking is when the Hearing people uses their sign language to communicate among themselves, not with  a single Deaf person around and eliminate the use of oral language. The writer said that this was a sin. I agree with the writer because  I can see that the deaf people are facing systematic oppression in their daily lives. This shows that these two groups struggle to have equal opportunities and the struggle for such oppression split these two groups  apart, just because they could not communicate with each other.

 

Like the Deaf people, the Black people also share the common grievance of being a minority. The term "minority" has become a position of oppression where they receive a lack of respect from the dominant culture, lack of education and lack of receiving equal rights.

 

References:

Gesser,A.(2007).Learning about Hearing People in the Land of the Deaf: An Ethnographic Account. Sign Language Studies,7(3),269-283