BSL level two & Barcamp London 8

So this week I attended my second level 2 BSL lesson. Firstly let me tell you; it’s hard! Much harder than I was expecting.

The first thing that took me by surprise was the fact that we are not allowed to use our voices during lessons. This means you have to sign everything, and what you don’t know the sign for, you have to spell!

Having been almost a year since my last proper lesson, I have to say I really struggled during my first class, to the point that I considered leaving level two all together. I found it difficult to keep up with the pace of the lesson, I could barely read any fingerspellings and I generally found that I wasn’t engaging with my classmates, losing track of their conversations and struggling to pick it back up.

I was really disheartened after my first lesson back, but as with most things, you must persevere, and with a bit of practice finger-spelling with a friend, I felt my confidence returning.

My second lesson was held last night at the Independent Living Centre on Whitegate Drive in Blackpool, and thankfully I enjoyed this lesson a lot more than my first.

Having missed a lesson inbetween time, I was slightly behind the rest of my class, luckily for me it was just some basic vocabulary which I was able to pick up during break time.

This week we looked at “classified” signs, which are difficult to explain without showing you an example, but they are signs that take on the characteristics of what you are describing, so pointing out your forefinger and middle finger on your right hand, the tips of your fingers become your eyes and you would use them to portray the movement of your eyes when looking for something, for example following someone around a room (moving your finger tips slowly from right to left) or looking under a table for something (creating a table with your left hand by laying it out flat, and using the tips of your right hand to look above the “table” and then below by moving your right hand underneath the left, using a quizzical facial expression) .

My homework for this week is to create a story based on some cartoon images we were given of a young boy, using classified signs. I may adapt the story to show the boy running, walking, or perhaps strolling somewhere, all of which are essentially the same sign, but with some slight changes to the pace of the movement and the facial expression to create these “classified” signs.

It’s only my second lesson, and the 81 page course specification (PDF available from Signature) explains the entirety of what we will be both covering and expected to know by the end of the course. Having skimmed it briefly, there is a lot still left to learn, and I’m now really looking forward to both learning the new signs and sharing them, possibly at Barcamp London 8 if I can nab a slot!

Lally.