The 1st Symposium in Applied Sign Linguistics: “Sign Language Teaching and Learning” (24 – 26 September 2009) underlined the need for academics, practitioners and the Deaf Community to work in close to share approaches and strategies yielding lasting records of present (and past) achievements in the teaching and learning of sign languages as first, second, and/or foreign languages. After its successful participation, this second symposium aims at bringing together scholars, researchers and educational practitioners to discuss the ‘documentation’ of sign languages for teaching and learning purposes.
The term ‘documentation’ refers to all means that ‘record’ signed languages, and which aim at enhancing the teaching and learning processes. The main focus will be on the documentation of sign languages mainly through the visual medium i.e. digital video; CALL; Internet, film etc., and its subsequent use in the teaching and learning of sign languages as first, second, and/or foreign languages. At this time, when there is so much activity in the field of digital technology (e.g. sign language corpora, e-learning environments, etc), we are pleased to be able to bring together such an impressive range of participants, representing work in the field of Applied Sign Linguistics from all over the world. We believe that there is a wealth of ‘support’ materials available but very little of these is designed for direct study, and is not structured as a learning/teaching opportunity.
Abstracts are welcome for oral, poster presentations and pre-conference seminars on the following areas:
We will consider papers of any related field in Applied Linguistics.
Abstracts should be sent to Dr. Maria Mertzani: M.Mertzani@bristol.ac.uk
British Sign Language (BSL) and English are the official languages of the symposium.
Maria Mertzani, Research Assistant, Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol.
For any further enquiries, please contact Maria Mertzani: M.Mertzani@bristol.ac.uk
