Saturday, January 26, 2013

Course Work

I have now had 3 weeks of classes and I must say I could get used to the schooling system here. I only have class monday through Wednesday and I only have about 7 hours of class a week! I am taking 4 classes:
Psychology of Language and Cognition
Linguistics of Sign Language
Ancient World History in London Collections 
and my fourth course is helping with a research project called Famous Face Recognition in Deaf users of BSL. 

I am enjoying all of my classes and the reading for them. It is a fair amount of reading per week because of the small number of hours in class, but it's manageable and I find it interesting. 

Last week my history class was held in the British Museum. I had not been to the British Museum and found it impressive. There are so many large sculptures from Egypt. Including the Rosetta Stone which helped linguists a great deal in deciphering hieroglyphics. The artifacts that are in the British Museum are much different from the artifacts we saw the week before in the Petrie Museum. These artifacts are much smaller, but there are many more of them and tell us more about Egyptian life. In comparing these two museums we will be exploring what it is that museums tend to tell us. The comparisons will also help us see how a people and culture can be displayed and thought about. 

I also just started the research project I will be helping out with on Thursday. I had a meeting with a Deaf woman named Jo. She learned American Sign Language (ASL) quite a few years ago but remembered most of the language, which was helpful as I know virtually no British Sign Language (BSL) and the languages are vastly different. It was exciting to communicate with her in sign language, because I hadn't used the language in so long. She seemed to appreciate the fact that I signed and we didn't need an interpreter. I am pumped to do some research on the subject and analyze the results of her study. I will also be creating a new test tailored towards Deaf people which she will use in a clinic! Stay tuned for more information about the study as I will keep you updated on what I find to be the fascinating aspects. 

Have a wonderfully marvelous day, cheers! ~Laura 

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