Abstract:

Greek Sign Language (GSL) is a heavily inflected three-dimensional language with a short history of linguistic research. It has been traditionally used by the Deaf community in Greece as a first or preferred language (L1). However, a series of policy changes towards using GSL through interpreters in all settings of everyday life [1], educational policies demanding proficiency on GSL for all school staff where deaf students attend (law 2817/2000), has increased the need for GSL learning as a second language (L2) dramatically. Until recently, GSL was mainly taught following a non-standardized, linguistic immersion approach, in small groups and in-person settings, where subjective criteria were followed in teaching and evaluation [2].
Recent abrupt changes on health-related circumstances during the Covid 19 crisis, such as the need for interactive content in online teaching of GSL at tertiary education level, the inadequate network speed or students’ personal computers, limitations upon numbers of participants in each online group, and use of facial masks in the classroom, have had an unprecedented impact on the methodology of teaching GSL as a L2. These were reinforced by the suggestion for uniformity of L2 content for EU members, through the Common European Framework (CEFR) [3]. While there is a significant size in GSL corpora at a lexical level as well as an abundant pool of annotated signed texts [4], the gap between a lemma and a text still remains. Word limits, heavy inflections, as well as 3D features in phrase formation rules in GSL are different from those in Modern Greek and challenge traditional teaching methodologies, especially in an online platform. The educational platform for Sign Language Recognition in Education (SL-ReDu) has combined L2 learning methods and findings of ongoing research in sign linguistics with technological tools beyond the current state-of-the-art [5].
The paper describes the process, outcomes and challenges of updating the SL-ReDu platform. The most recent content updates cover the gap in comprehension and communication with a systematic presentation, self-evaluation and testing of short signed phrases at beginner levels (A0-A1). The layout is structured on the basis of CEFR thematic guidelines, combined with units on grammar required for beginner levels. Concepts of time, question, negation, person agreement, plural, quantifiers for nouns and verbs are provided as learning material for both passive and active language skills.

References:
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202
[2] G. Sapountzaki, E. Efthimiou, S.-E. Fotinea, K. Papadimitriou & G. Potamianos, “Educational material organization in a platform for Greek Sign Language self-monitoring and assessment,” Proc. EDULEARN, 2021.
[3] Counc. of Europe, 2018 & Leeson, L., Haug, T., Rathmann, C. & van der Bogaerde, B. (2018). Survey Report from the ECML Project ProSign: Sign Languages for Professional Purposes. The Implementation of CEFR for SLs in Higher Education: Results of an Intl Survey. Council of Europe, 2018
[4] G. Sapountzaki, E. Efthimiou, S.-E. Fotinea, K. Papadimitriou , and G. Potamianos, “3D Greek Sign Language classifiers as a learning object in the SL-ReDu online education platform,” Proc. EDULEARN, 2022.
[5] K. Papadimitriou, G. Potamianos, G. Sapountzaki, T. Goulas, E. Efthimiou, S.-E. Fotinea & P. Maragos, “Greek Sign Language recognition for the SL-ReDu learning platform,” Proc. LREC-SLTAT Works., 2022.

Keywords:

Sign language learning, second language learning, self-assessment, online testing, sign language recognition, distance learning, sign language linguistics.