Deaf Culture

Tucked away deep in the economics section of the Library Resource Centre (LRC), a particular Bromsgrove Service activity spends their sessions studying a form of communication. Led by Dr Rimmer, the deaf culture and communications group learn everything about the British Sign Language (BSL), from the alphabets, expressing emotions, conducting basic communication all the way to learning the culture behind BSL.

Dr Rimmer ensures students can remember what is taught in previous lessons by giving them hands-on experience using sign language by communicating with them through BSL. She asks many different questions, such as ‘where are you from’ or ‘how old are you’, which requires a combination of different signs to form a proper answer.

After an interview with a few Upper Sixth students, it is no surprise to find out that they chose this activity to enrich themselves beyond the School curriculum; to now only learn to speak to the audibly impaired, but also become more interested about their culture. “By no means is learning BSL easy though”, states an Upper Sixth student who chose to remain anonymous, “there are so many different hand gestures to remember, I think it’s even harder than Chinese!”



As the lesson progresses, the style of teaching transitions from verbal interactions with Dr Rimmer to watching videos and documentaries to learning to sign gestures commonly used by deaf people, enabling students to pick up patterns and learn more about their culture.

A particularly interesting segment of a documentary by the BBC showed how a deaf teenage girl manages to cope with everyday life. She states that learning the BSL has changed her life and she is very happy with her current life. Of course, these people are no different from us. The video showed this girl learning how to drive in order to achieve her dream of becoming a makeup artist for audibly impaired patients, and being able to drive to their homes will be essential to this.

Surprisingly, there are many driving instructors that can accommodate deaf learners. By no means is the learning process easy though, the student will have to split their concentration from watching the road to watching their teacher give them advice - at times it can be very stressful. Of course, all of their hard work will bear fruit, and even the driving teacher states that deaf students can be better drivers than non-audibly impaired people because they will tend to check their windows and surroundings more often. In addition, cars in the modern day tend to be silent anyway. Despite not being able to hear the horn beeping, the girl states in the video that it should not be a problem if she just checks her surroundings.

Personally, I feel that Dr Rimmer’s way of alternating her teaching between videos and conversing with the students is really effective and engaging for the students. It is no wonder that this is an increasing popular activity. Most of the students in the class “wanted to expand their communication capabilities” and find it meaningful “to learn a skill that is easy to pick up to communicate with others”. Of course, outside of Bromsgrove, there may not be many opportunities to learn this skill otherwise, so the students “want to make the most out of it”. Even though the time I spent there was short, I even managed to learn a word or two. An interesting fact I learned was that the BSL’s dialect can vary from region to region.

And that is it for this week’s article! Thank you for your time reading this article, and be sure to keep a look out for our upcoming articles, or take a look at our previous articles as well.

Tang M et al
24th September 2019