Learning to Teach

A visit to the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is an inspiring, uplifting look at how educational sign language programs developed by the Centre's caring, professional staff help train the deaf to build self confidence, and get high school and university educations.

The Centre has developed a series of sign language texts in Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Indonesian, and Tagalog. Some of these countries such as Indonesia have several sign language systems used by the deaf, so the Centre developed signage dictionaries for the variations as well. These successful programs were made possible with support from The Nippon Foundation.

Currently, CSLDS has completed its first stage program--developing the dictionaries--and has now moved into the second stage of educating deaf teachers in each of the languages mentioned above to teach signage in local schools. Parallel to this, non-deaf teachers in each country are also being trained in local sign language, so that they can act as a bridge between hearing communities, deaf educators and non-hearing students.

Dr James Woodward is one of the professors involved in the CSLDS projects. He has done extensive linguistic and signage research in Southeast Asia to help provide dictionaries for all the participating countries in the Nippon Foundation sponsored program. He is particularly heartened that in the second stage of the project to train teachers for the deaf, some of these future educators are being offered the opportunity to study new signage teaching skills at CUHK, to take back to the schools for the deaf in their own countries.