9.2 Describing the House

The video was an interesting combination of easy and hard to follow sections for me, helping me realize areas I need to improve.

Broadly, there were a few categories for me:
1. Very specific moments that I was confused about a specific thing he was describing. For example, around 1:46-1:48, he describes something at one end of the bed (headboard?). I did not understand the way he was describing it and without the video would have thought perhaps he was describing a bench at the foot of the bed.

2. Even when I otherwise understood what he was describing, sometimes had I difficulty mentally tracking orientation and location. Once he was in a room and had established orientation, I understood better, but if he was then pointing to or transitioning to another room, sometimes I got confused. (For me, oddly, this was also true in the most recent lecture video. I don’t know why but I find when the signer is always adopting my view it is MUCH harder for me to follow then when it stays the signer’s view, and I can get confused when the “me” in the situation may have turned). Relatedly – I did not understand where the TV room was in relation to the rest. I was also slightly confused where the children’s playset / swingset was in relation to the property.

3. I realized my brain was spending a lot of attention trying to be ready for him to switch between signs, classifiers, fingerspelling, and a change in location. As a result, there were probably 3-4 moments I was confused because I was so focused on looking for one of these transitions I did not keep up and had to go back a few seconds. An example of this is at the 35 second mark when he was describing the living room and then suddenly using classifiers has walked around and up the stairs to look down. Once I realized the transition, it made sense, but in the moment, I was expecting him to describe / walk to something else in the living room next.

4. A couple times, he finished signing about a room after it was off video (e.g. the chairs in the children’s bedroom around 1:24) and I was briefly confused until I realized and saw him switch to describing the bed in the next bedroom.