Journal 1: Guest Lecture & Sign Language Class (Weeks 2 & 3)

Date: 6th April 2016

Time: 2pm – 3pm

Venue: LT21

Type: Guest Lecture – RC Deaf Missions Malaysia

There are about 70 million deaf people who use sign language as their first language or mother tongue. Ms. Agnes and Mr. Mario Peter are the co-founders of RC Deaf Missions Malaysia, and it was co-founded in 2006. Mr. Mario get round to give us a speech about this issue and made us to have a new turn on this matter! He listed out variety of true stories that changes my perspective towards the deaf.

For instance, Mr. Mario helped a deaf lady to improve her living standard by encouraging her to bake cookies. Then, asking a deaf man to come over and collect the cookies then deliver it to the customers. The purpose that Mr. Mario is sharing this story is to prove that deaf people could live like normal people too. Besides, Mr. Mario also stated that most of the employers would prefer to hire an employee that without any disabilities instead of the deaf, due to the reason of communication barrier. However, this kind of discrimination is not a good sign and it shouldn’t be passed on to the society.

Below are the definition of the Logo and the objectives of RCDMM.

The person with white shirt is Mr. Mario Peter, one of the co-founder of RCDMM.

Then, Ms. Low Chai Yun take over the stage after Mr. Mario. Ms. Anita was expressing Ms. Low’s thought in words by reading her sign language because she’s deaf. Due to the reason that Ms. Low is the only deaf person in her family; therefore, she communicate with them by using home sign language.

Besides that, she’s a very independent person as she has many roles in her work. For example, tutor (teach sign language), teach lives independence skills, assistant administrator and an evaluator in diploma in sign language interpreting. Other than that, she’s a very hardworking person. This is because she has to work double compared to the normal human being like us. Not only that, Ms. Low is also a kind-hearted person as she’s willing to serve the deaf person and help them to go through the difficulties.

The person who is showing the sign language is Ms. Low Chai Yun.

Date: 13th April 2016

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Venue: LT21

Type: Sign Language Class

For the second lecture, Ms. Low came over and taught us basic sign language. From my own perspective, sign language is a very beautiful language for me. We could have a better excess into the world of the deaf that majority of people might not even have the chance to. Do you think that Deaf people miss out on music? Not really. What hearing people miss out is literary arts in sign language for its linguistically creative language play, poetry, and storytelling.

Below are the photos while sign language class was being conducted: