Kim Webster’s University Diary: The communication issues of my first few weeks

Hi Kim,

As a fellow student, doing an MA now in a humanities subject, but who gained a first class BA 18 months ago, a few things to suggest from experience…

1) For seminars and interrupting, ask your seminar leader to make sure each member of the group sticks their hands up when they want to ask a question/say something. They (your fellow students) won’t like it, but they’ll get used to it! I would also suggest that, assuming you’re working with the same, or same group of interpreters on a regular basis, ask them to help you know when to interrupt, if the leader won’t impelement a handraising policy. I find if I sort of half raise my hand/finger so the interpreter clocks it, and know what that means, then they can listen and tell you when to go. I think too, when you do the inevitable introductions at the beginning of the module, when they ask you to go around and say a bit about yourself, I find that’s a good time to explain about the interpreter/notetaker (I call them my ‘entourage!’) and also to ask forgiveness if you do inadvertently interrupt and ride roughshod over someone else. Doesn’t make it okay if you deliberately and regularly do it, I think they’d soon pick up on that, but for the odd mistake, yeah, I think that can make a lot of difference. You’ll find people soon get to know you’re deaf and make allowances anyway.

2) Lecturer asking if everything was okay – yes, it is nice of them, but something else may also be going on – trying to alleviate THEIR worries. I don’t know which uni you’re at and how deaf-savvy they are, but at mine, I was the first person to use an interpreter in their classes and a lot of them were very unsure to begin with. I began a policy of emailing each tutor at the beginning of a module and explaining the interpreter, what they needed to do, etc., and that really helped reassure them, I think. I’ve got most of my department fully trained in how to use interpreters now. (!)

3) too many long words in English hindering the BSL interpreter: three things you can do about that. a) try to ensure that you get the same interpreter for that particular class throughout the module. this means that the interpreter keeps up with your class and the particular terminology, their understanding of it will be better. b) if you find that you have particular terminology regularly showing up, develop signs between you and your interpreter, they won’t make sense to anyone else, but they don’t necessarily need to. c) I don’t know how your lipreading is, but mine is pretty good, and my fingerspelling is pretty bad. so I found I did better, with completely new terminology, when the interpreter fingerspelled the first letter of the new word, and lipspoke the rest. or if it was a multipart word, for example, anti-disestablishmentarian (only long word I can think of off the top of my head) they might sign a- while lipspeaking anti, d while lipspeaking dis, e- while lipspeaking establishment… and I’d get the rest. You get the idea.

4) Does your uni have a policy of making the powerpoints available after class to the students? If so, ask if you can have the powerpoints before class instead. This is better for your interpreter, as they get clued up ahead of time of any potentially awkward terminology (so you can agree temporary signs) and better for any notetaker that you have, whether electronic or otherwise, as it means that they can write your notes to match the powerpoint. Very useful when it comes to revision!

5) Electronic notetakers are great, I loved having mine in my pre-uni (college) days, but when I got to uni, I found that electronic notetakers were great in lectures, but in seminars, an interpreter was more immediately useful. These days I have both a regular notetaker and an interpreter, and I can and do request either for meetings. For example, if I meet with my supervisor, I understand him just fine, and I speak okay, so no need for an interpreter. But I find he throws so much info at me in such a short space of time that its necessary for someone to come along and take down all this info, books i should read, ideas i should chase, etc. Don’t get fixed on the idea of one solution fits all – it won’t.

You’re absolutely right in that organisation and plenty of sleep is the key to succeeding! Also being ‘pushy, with charm’, is the way i recently read it…!, basically standing up for yourself and your rights. You have a right to access your education as much as a hearing person. Keep telling yourself that when you get denied access to an interpreter or notetaker for stuff going on outside your core modules of study, but that might be useful to you, career wise – because it will happen, and you have to be prepared to fight for it.

Good luck with your course – and if I can do anything to help, you can reach me at deafstudentuk at gmail dot com. 🙂

Hi You will probably need a formal re-assessment for an electronic notetaker as we are funded by government and manuals by the university. Also we have our own association, website and register so if SFE agrees the provision, you could source your own qualified ENT or use someone from uni, but I suggest checking prices so you don’t go over budget. M

@Hartmut – nope, sorry! I’m not a linguist! I just remember that word from a quiz show when I was a teenager, the game gave you three letters, and you had to give the longest word you could, using the three letters in the same order as it appeared on the board. Angela Rippon presented it, if I remember right. (I’m showing my age now…! And I just googled and it was called Masterteam). But anyway, someone gave that word as an answer and it so impressed me that it stuck in my head.

Yes. I have a funny brain… (!)

I’m sure Meriel will give a more complete and technically correct answer, but the electronic notetakers I had used a laptop to type out what was said, which was linked to a small notebook computer, showing the words. So it effectively worked like live subtitling. I had two who spelled each other as the classes were 4 hours long and the main teacher was an enthusiastic Yorkshireman who liked to speak at 20,000 miles an hour (!) Keeping up with that one was challenging at the best of times.. 🙂

I’ve also had an electronic notetaker who used a single laptop, I sat next to her in lectures as she typed so I could read over her shoulder. However… the use of a laptop, as I’m sure Meriel will be the first to tell you, doesn’t make you a proper electronic notetaker. One of my first notetakers was employed directly by the university, and was used to doing notes for people with dyslexia, that sort of thing, who needed abbreviated summaries, rather than the full notes that deaf people need. I sat next to him, and he spent the lectures reading his email, surfing facebook and ebay, breaking off occasionally to type something in the notes. He produced one sheet of A4 for an hour long lecture, whereas the fully trained, qualified electronic notetaker produced around 4-6 sides of A4 for the same length of time. Needless to say I complained and asked for him not to be assigned to me again, but the university continued to use him. I still see him around campus to this day. I can only assume that for dyslexics etc., he was doing a good job of summarising the information in the lecture, but that really wasn’t good enough for me, or other deaf people.