ExCEL Report 2: Program Sign Language Day

Program Sign Language Day is held from 4^th to 5^th December 2020 which is organized by Jawatankuasa Kolej Mahasiswa Kolej Tun Dr Ismail, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The purpose of this program is to teach sign language to utm student. The main reason I joined this event because I think it was a precious chance for me to learn sign language from the professional to be able to communicate with the deaf.

This program has launched for 2 days. On the first day, a 2-hour class was conducted on Google meet followed by group activity briefing and group discussion. After learning simple sign language, we were assigned to a few groups and be given the group task which was produced a recorded video with the specific theme. We were given 1 day to complete our video.

This event has involved several graduate attributes namely communication skills, leadership and teamworking skills and global citizen. As a participant and group member, it was indeed crucial to apply communication and teamworking skills to ensure a productive discussion among the group to create an innovative and interesting video. Moreover, I was also be impacted by the importance of sign language and be empathy as well as respect to the deaf.

This program is meaningful and informative to me because I felt very grateful to have such opportunity to learn sign language that I interested. It allowed me to know the method to communicate with deaf nicely. Through the sign language, I able to even have more understanding on their difficulty and situation, meanwhile give assistance to them implicitly without hurting their self-esteem. Despite I faced challenges as I was unable to remember all the sign languages, I didn’t give up and finally I did well in my group video.

Throughout the Sign Language Day event, I have improved my communication skills in term of sign language. My teamworking skill also be strengthen when discussed group activity with all new groupmates and completed as well as submitted our group video on time. By exploring sign language, my graduate attribute which is global citizen be implemented as I have become more empathy and care more about others by trying to understand their thinking mode through sign language.

This event was a memorable experience to me. I believe sign language is not a language but a way for us to go into the deaf world and be friend with them. I hope that I able to master the sign language by keep practising it in the future.