Learning British Sign Language (Level 1)

During my Master’s studies in English Language at the University of Birmingham, I discovered the UoB Sign Language Society; a society that organised 65 hours of tutored lessons in level 1 British Sign Language (BSL) over a course of night classes for 6 months. Sign Language and gesture has become a keen field of research for academic linguists. At the taster session, the sign language linguist Dr Adam Schembri from my department (English Language and Applied Linguistics) introduced the concept of deaf 

culture and the development of BSL to attendees, including myself. ​He highlighted the connections between sign language and metaphor, which piqued my interest. Furthermore, I had always wanted to learn a new language but had never progressed very far from the initial basics when trying to learn a foreign spoken language. Therefore, after the taster session, I decided to commit and try my hand at learning BSL.
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