{"id":88400,"date":"2017-03-01T18:47:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T16:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/a-degree-with-a-difference-using-south-african-sign-language-instead-of-the-written-word-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2017-03-01T18:47:39","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T16:47:39","slug":"a-degree-with-a-difference-using-south-african-sign-language-instead-of-the-written-word-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/a-degree-with-a-difference-using-south-african-sign-language-instead-of-the-written-word-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"A degree with a difference: using South African sign language instead of the written word | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A degree with a difference: using South African sign language instead of the written word<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Nyeleti Nokwazi Nkwinika acknowledges the applause after graduating with her Masters degree.<\/span> Wits University<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nyeleti Nokwazi Nkwinika was a year into her Master\u2019s dissertation in English, and she was struggling. This has nothing to do with her work ethic: the problem lay with her hearing. Nyeleti was born deaf and like many others in her situation, she battles with written language.<\/p>\n

Most deaf people are born into hearing families who don\u2019t have any skills in Sign Language. In Nyeleti\u2019s case, she only learned to use South African Sign Language fluently at school. When she got to high school she attended a mainstream hearing school with several other top performing deaf pupils from her previous school. <\/p>\n

By then, she had missed out on too many years of access to English. South African Sign Language and English are differently structured. This can make it hard to learn for deaf people who\u2019ve only ever used sign language to communicate. It\u2019s also very difficult to learn written English when one has never heard the language or used it for conversational purposes.<\/p>\n

Nyeleti was so frustrated and disheartened by the end of 2014 that she considered dropping out. Instead, we came up with a radical idea that would put Nyeleti, ourselves as her supervisors and a number of university structures to the test: she would submit her proposal and, ultimately, her dissertation, entirely in South African Sign Language.<\/p>\n

In November 2016 Nyeleti graduated with her Masters degree. Her achievement is remarkable. It sets a precedent in South Africa and is one of only a few in the world \u2013 other signed postgraduate degrees have been completed in the UK, Japan and the US. We hope our experiences might offer some ideas and lessons to universities that wish to be truly inclusive.<\/p>\n

Forging new paths<\/h2>\n

Neither of us had ever supervised a Deaf student producing a signed South African Sign Language MA. Both of us are hearing and Andrew doesn\u2019t know any South African Sign Language. But his expertise as a co-supervisor were necessary because of his background in historical linguistics, the topic of Nyeleti\u2019s dissertation. <\/p>\n

Once we\u2019d decided to go ahead with this ambitious plan and Nyeleti\u2019s proposal had been approved by the external reader, we put together a video proposal for the university\u2019s ethics committee. This body approves all postgraduate research proposals. <\/p>\n

We arranged for Nyeleti to submit a DVD of her proposal as well as the standard written ethics application form. Initially the committee asked for an English translation of the proposal. It didn\u2019t specify if this should be written by Nyeleti or spoken by someone else. We agreed to organise this \u2013 on condition that the committee paid the bill, which would have come to at least R2 000.<\/p>\n

They let it go. Nyeleti\u2019s ethics application was approved on the basis of her written abstract and completed forms.<\/p>\n

Then the real work began. <\/p>\n

It came with challenges we couldn\u2019t have anticipated, like the length and nature of supervision sessions; the need to have an interpreter at each session and how best to film Nyeleti as she presented her work in South African Sign Language. Later on, we had to find a suitable external examiner and work out how best to present footnotes. And what about organising data into tables? <\/p>\n

We suggested that Nyeleti initially create her tables with written words for signs on a flip chart and then sign each row while standing next to the flip chart. This was very lengthy (four hours of filming) and we later suggested she move these signed tables into the appendix and insert word document tables into the video with a short summary explanation of her findings while cross referencing the appendix.<\/p>\n