General Interpreting Skill Development:
Improving Fingerspelling & Numbers
This guide enhances general interpreting skills by providing activities to improve fingerspelling and numbers within narratives. Resources are provided below.
All activities are explained for fingerspelled items. Activities can also be used with numbers.
NOTE: These activities assume the interpreter is already competent in English spelling. If English spelling is deficient, it should be addressed as a prerequisite.
Activities
Maintain a journal of fingerspelled items and numbers that you observe in interactions with Deaf Community members.
Review and practice the production of these items in isolation and in a self-generated context on a regular basis.
Have a colleague drill you from your journal for receptive skill practice.
For Receptive Skill Development:
- View a recording of a Deaf person signing a narrative.
- As fingerspelled items occur, stop the tape and write the recognized letters on a
sheet of paper. Attempt to record at least the beginning and ending letter.
- After viewing the narrative in its entirety, review the list of fingerspelled items
and use your closure skills to determine what the fingerspelled items might be. If
you cannot identify the word specifically, identify it in terms of whether it is the
name of a person, place, thing, event, or miscellaneous item.
- Repeat viewing the narrative and insert your anticipated word. Evaluate whether it
fits in terms of form and content. If not, repeat the process, trying to isolate additional
letters.
- Repeat the process with a variety of narratives.
For Expressive Skill Development:
- View a recording of a Deaf person signing a narrative.
- As fingerspelled items occur, stop the tape and generate your own spelling production
of the word.
- After completing the viewing and production of each fingerspelled item, replay the
narrative. This time, fingerspell the words simultaneously as they appear in the narrative.
In other words, shadow the fingerspelling.
- Replay the narrative one more time. This time, shadow sign the entire text, including
the fingerspelled items as they occur within context.
- As a final step, generate your own rendition of the narrative, incorporating the appropriate fingerspelled items in a natural manner. This step is a re-telling of the text in your own words, but retaining the incorporation of the fingerspelled items as they occurred in the narrative.
- Repeat the process with a variety of narratives.
Resources
NOTE: These resources were last updated March 2021.
A PDF version of this guide is available - General Interpreting Skill Development: Improving Fingerspelling & Numbers
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As of December 31, 2021, this grant project is no longer active or soliciting applications.
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