Amazing Talent

Usually I don’t tell stories about my work, preferring to document my artistic endeavours instead. There are, however, some stories that are just too good not to tell. So here goes…

Part of my job at the moment involves teaching two Deaf boys “English”. The boys are roughly 15 years old but for various reasons, their English skills are somewhat limited to the extent that they don’t read / write at all well.

In the past weeks, a regular class has involved me selecting a simple “passage” (five or six English sentences), signing it to them in New Zealand Sign Language and then working through simple comprehension questions with them. The idea is to get them to read through a piece of text and be able to answer simple questions.

Bearing in mind that these boys tend to panic when faced with text, things in class move fairly slowly. Anyhow, today I asked them if they wanted me to sign the text as usual or if they wanted to have a go at reading it and then signing it to me.

Student number one, who has incredible story telling / signing skills decided to give it a go. After carefully reading the passage he starts to tell the story. The story that I gave him was one in which a boy explains how he went to the airport to pick up his aunt who was arriving from Taiwan.

My student tends to embroider on what he reads when he puts it into Sign Language. I knew that he did not quite get the story when he starts signing how the boy got up in the morning and started to pack luggage into the car. It did not take long for me to realise that somehow, my student had missed the ‘coming from Taiwan’ and thought that the relative was ‘going to Taiwan’.

He enthusiastically signed how the family packed the luggage in the car, got on the motorway and drove to the airport, found a luggage cart, watched while the aunt went through check in procedures and then watched her plane take off.

It was only after he was done that I had the heart to tell him that although his story was wonderful and his signing skill was amazing, he was telling the wrong story. The poor kid was really embarrassed at how he had misunderstood the story. The good thing is that I explained that hearing people sometimes get it wrong too.

He will probably never forget the difference between ‘coming from’ and ‘going to’ again. And I got lucky. Being a good sport, he was pretty keen to tell the correct story after realising his mistake. The second story was, if possible even better told than the first.

Turns out you can do things in Sign that you can’t do in English. For example, instead of simply signing the equivalent of “On Sunday I went to the airport.
My aunt was coming from Taiwan,” he goes into a long rendition of how he got up and had breakfast, signing an aeroplane high in the sky making an approach. He describes driving out to the airport as the plane slowly lands and so on. Think of a split screen television with one half showing the aeroplane and the other showing him getting ready and going to the airport and you can imagine what he was doing.

It was incredible. Marcel Marceau could probably learn a thing or two from this guy. His story ended with a hug from the aunt who was crying with joy.

At the end of the day, this is what I love about my job. I am passionate about New Zealand Sign Language and to see it in action like this is really awesome. In some ways, I am learning more from my students than they learn are learning from me.

In case you are worried, I have an ever increasing stack of fractals waiting to be posted to this blog. So if you missed the graphic, please stay tuned.