Communication Barriers

Last Wednesday marked my fourth day in ASL class and I was pleased with my test score of 99 out of 100. This wasn't a huge surprise because much of the vocabulary was a review since I've already taken courses at the Hearing Speech and Deafness Cntr. and have spent lots of time conversing with a couple deaf friends. I was worried that I had lost some vocabulary since I haven't seen them lately, but it's quickly coming back.

The great thing about my college course is my deaf teacher is spending more time on ASL grammar and convention than my previous instructor did. She's moving quickly and I've already picked up many new words including the ASL names for all the local cities around here. Up til now I've only known Seattle, the town where my daughter goes to school, and a few towns in my vicinity. My teacher is absolutely wonderful! She's a natural mime. She has a great sense of humor and it's a perfect class for me in that we aren't allowed to talk, so it's a real visual experience which is the best way for me to learn ASL as a late-deafened person. One concern I previously had about taking college courses was that so many of them are geared towards interpreters.

Because we don't use our voices in class, I go into "no voice" mode and had not talked once until last Wednesday. Occasionally she does ask for people in the class to interpret what she's signing. It's clear she expects class participation and so--last Wednesday she asked (by pointing) for someone to make up a sentence and for someone else to "interpret." Pretty much the entire class had spoken up at some point. I knew she expected me to particpate. There came a time when no one knew the answer but me. As I've explained in the past, when I'm in ASL mode I really enjoy NOT talking, and I take my hearing aids off in class, so I'm kicking back just enjoying ASL and deafness. At that point when she kept asking if anyone knew the answer, I struggled with this because I knew the answer and no one else did. Very hesitantly I raised my hand and spoke aloud-- for the first time.

Then she signed "again" until I repeated my answer three times. She has never done this to anyone else. I always sit right up front. She's hard-of-hearing/deaf-- I'm not sure which. I don't know if I wasn't speaking loudly enough or if she was having trouble reading my lips, but I was embarrassed. I've become self-conscious of my speech because people have said it has changed and have asked about my "accent." Then when she made me repeat the answer over and over and over I wondered if she didn't understand me because I was talking weird, and if everyone else in the class thought I had weird speech. Finally she signed my interpretation was correct and moved on. She has sort of a teasing way about her, so I'm pretty sure she wasn't doing it to be mean. But it was awkward for me and I'm not sure if I will speak again for the rest of the quarter when she asks someone to "interpret." And I can't talk to her about it because we're only allowed to sign with her. Do I need to reframe my perspective? This is way too complicated to for me to discuss with her partly because I might be over-reacting, and partly because I don't have the ASL vocabulary to clearly express my feelings or concerns about the possibility that my speech might be deteriorating along with my hearing. How convoluted is that?? I mean. . . the irony of it-- I'm in ASL to learn how to talk with my hands and feeling awkward about my voice.

Picture above taken by Wanderlust http://flickr.com/photos/phoebewanders/