Mollie's Mission - BSL
I had the absolute pleasure today of attending a British Sign Language Masterclass organised by the new British Sign Language (BSL) society. This masterclass was to raise awareness of BSL and how to be proactive when communicating with a deaf person, which was lead by Thomas from Deaf Active.
BSL has been a recognised language in the UK since 2003. It is different from other sign languages such as Makaton and American. BSL also has regional differences, similar to accents and since we are in North West, we learnt the Liverpool regional BSL.
I learnt so much! We started with the basics of learning the alphabet so that we could spell any word we needed to. We were given some hints and tips on what is bad practice and what is good practice.
Facial expressions play a big part in BSL especially when telling someone your emotion or feelings. This can be the difference from you slightly in pain or severe pain.
We also learnt some very simple conversation so that when meeting a deaf or hard-of-hearing person we can hold a conversation. We learnt things such as 'How old are you?', 'Where do you live?' and 'How are you feeling'.
Something really important I learnt was how deaf people can safely contact the emergency services. Unfortunately not a lot of deaf people know about this so we need to spread the knowledge
This was a great introduction to BSL for beginners as I had never done anything like this before but I have learnt so much in just 1 day. This even included some great medical terms for those in the Nursing, Midwifery or Paramedic studies.
A great app to use is the BSL - Level 1, which is an app that gives you lots of information on signing conversations, greetings and food and drink
If you want to attend the next one (Wednesday 11th December) get your ticket now for the BSL society page.
