My signficant pursuit is to attend workshops to prepare me as an interpreter. This was a perfect first workshop. My favorite thing about the workshop is the fact that she never spent more than 15 min on each topic. We learned it, practiced and regrouped/discussed it. 

The way she approached interpreting was very unique. She used explaining a video as an analogy. We watched a minute video and tried our best to describe it to people in our group. She wanted us to get as much info as possible. At first we were all so focused on the detailed by describing colors, shapes, patterns. She then pulled us back and asked us what we thought of when we see a fire hydrant. Obviously I pictured a red metal firehydrant with a bolt on the side. She then asked if it was necessary to describe everything of that hydrant. That made perfect sense.

We then were given a picture of a chair and asked to describe it in classifiers. "Classifiers are designated handshapes and/or rule- grounded body pantomime used to nouns and verbs" according to a powerpoint provided. It was so bizarre that I could not explain what a chair looked like with signs. She then asked us to focus on the main focus and build from there. I had a modern curved chair that looked like an "S" so I started by tracing the shape in air. Then I worked on showing the thin character of it. It was such an efficient way of describing it. 

I look forward to attending more workshops this semester.