why Sign Language?

Hello, gorgeous! as I stated in my previous posts, I wanted to spend this semester break on learning Sign Language. Every time I mentioned about this to my buddies, the same question would come up: Why Sign Language?

Since I was at the Centre of Foundation Studies, I never had a semester break without a plan. It's become my habit to plan something before final exam ends because I hate myself for being unproductive. I hate having free time without doing anything. I spent my previous semester break on reading all children books that are available in this house. (since parents are both teaching primary school students, we have loads in here). It may sound nothing but it's like a serious mission to me because the objective was not just to read, but to enrich my vocabularies, polish up my grammar use, as well as my pronunciation since I read 'em out loud. Alhamdulillah it did help me in improving my pronunciation especially when I had to emceeing for several programs in campus. Plus, it brought back those good memories of my childhood days. auww. But unfortunately, I didn't manage to finish reading ALL of them since I was also busy with my part-time translating + subtitling job.

Whoa. Too much for introduction. Okay, back to the headline (ceh), why Sign Language? Why not other foreign languages? I see a good point there. Since I was at school, my passion has always been languages. (In this case, specifically English Language) I was called 'Miss Grammar' by my English teacher when I was at Form 3. I used to be my friends' reference when it comes to doing English home works, etc. Apart from that, I also enjoy studying Arabic Language, maybe because I've been exposed to Arabic since I was at primary school. But it's pathetic that my Arabic ain't as good as my English. In short, I am a person whose interest is into languages, and does perform quite well at that too. And that may explain why I am doing Bachelor of English Language and Literature (majoring in English Linguistics).

So, back to the point, as a student majoring in English studies, I am aware that in order to have a wider job scope in the future, I need to be good at other things too. That is why a lot of my course mates are doing minor in other fields such as Psychology, Communication, Political Science, Business, etc. I am doing a minor too- Islamic Revealed Knowledge. But still, it ain't enough for me. I always tell myself that I need something that I really am good at it so I'd be flexible, and have the capability to jump into any job scopes in the future. However, if we are not into any minor courses, we may opt to study any foreign languages. That will bring a bright opportunity to be a translator, or work at the embassy, and much more. I myself had tried studying foreign languages, like Mandarin and Korean. I even had tried mastering Hangul. But due to lack of time, money, and good teachers, I gave up and quit half way. One fact about learning foreign language: the older we are, the harder language learning would be. English majors must know this. Critical Period Theory may explain about this in more accurate manner.

Hence, I decided to quit and just proceed to master in Arabic Language. That will do more good to me.

However, though I've made up my mind, my interest is still there. The enthusiasm to learn something that will do good to my future job is still there. So one day, I spent the whole day dwelling upon it, and voila! -Sign Language. It may take years to call myself a good user of sign language but hey world, I ain't that old. Once I started reading on it, I found it more interesting than others since it requires frequent practise with hand and body gestures.

Apart from that, I believe Sign Language will be useful to me someday. Life is all about possibilities; I may give birth to a deaf child, I may want to adopt a deaf child, I may end up being a speech therapist, I may be biologically related to deaf people in the future (in whatever way), and most importantly, I myself may not be a normal person for ever. I may be involved in an accident which causes me to be a deaf person thus I'll be needing sign language so badly. The point is, anything may happen. and also, there's no wrong of learning sign language.

So yeah, I am putting a full stop here so I can continue reading about Sign Language.

But before that, let's have a look at an extract from an online article that had inspired me to learn SL in the first place :)

(This is the result of a study conducted by a researcher at the University of California Los Angeles)

Albert Mehrabian, a well known psychologist, discovered that:

only 7 percent of the meaning conveyed by typical utterance regarding our feelings and attitudes comes from the words we use,

38 percent from our voice,

and 55 percent from our body language.

When our body language conflicts with our words, listeners will typically pay more attention to our nonverbal message. (Mehrabian, 1972).

Have a great day, readers!