The University of the Third Age - Welwyn Hatfield
British Sign Language study group
Group Leader: Jeff Palmer - email: signgroupwgc@gmail.com
Meetings are held on Friday mornings, in St Johns Church Annexe, Monks Rise, Welwyn Garden City, AL8 7NX.
The two Groups are currently full. If you would like to be included on the waiting list, please email: signgroupwgc@gmail.com.
Aims of the self-help Study Group
- To encourage participants to experiment with a different way of communicating with others in a relaxed supportive environment, and to enjoy themselves in the process.
- To demonstrate how it is possible for people to communicate and share complex ideas and concepts using British Sign Language. To read a very short guide to BSL, click here.
- To cater for all levels of signers from complete beginners to those with existing skills who want to improve or share their knowledge.
- To increase the participants' level of deaf-awareness. To read how you can help people who are trying to lipread you, click here.
- To enable participants to confidently, clearly, and fluently sign a range of useful conversational phrases, which can be read by clicking here.
Useful Online Resources
A whole library of BSL videos aimed at beginners and improvers has been made available online for home study by a Deaf tutor named Melanie.
- For her fingerspelling videos search in Google for:
“Mels fingerspelling practice”
- For her tutorials and signed stories search in Google for:
“Learning BSL with Mel”
- The University of Surrey have made a comprehensive range of BSL videos available as a free resource. They cover the structure and grammar of BSL. They can be found online by searching in Google for “bsl.surrey.ac.uk”
U3A Sign Language Group Video Clips
Click on the 3 dots in the bottom right-hand corner of a clip to choose the playback speed.
Web-site created by Roger Swaine.