(Disclaimer: Though I didn't find anything when I searched, I'd be pretty surprised if this isn't already baked somewhere.)

The idea itself is pretty self-explanatory: use nightclubs as a setting for teaching sign language. So, on to the benefits:

* Immersion - if the music's loud enough, you can't just talk to the other students in your first language. So you have to try signing right from the start.

* Communicative language teaching (CLT) approach - you learn through doing, and you can use what you learned later that very same night.

* Convenience - just turn up to the club a little earlier than you normally do, learn for an hour or so, then dance the rest of the night away.

* Fun - relaxed learning environment, you're all dressed for the dancefloor, and you can drink while you learn.
-- imaginality, Jan 10 2007

If the music's loud enough, you can't hear the instructor telling what {this sign} means.
-- angel, Jan 10 2007


That doesn't necessarily matter: teaching a new language without translating into students' L1, by relying on establishing meaning through use of context, realia (objects), gestures etc. can be done very successfully and is a widely-used approach.

When I was teaching English in China, for example, our school had an English-only approach even for beginner's classes. Similarly when I learned beginner's Czech in Prague, the class was conducted purely in Czech.

The only difference in this case is that using gestures for the words themselves could sometimes interfere with using gestures to establish the meaning of those words.
-- imaginality, Jan 10 2007


It might work if its purpose was to obtain a drink for yourself when it's so loud that no one can hear anything.
-- xandram, Jan 10 2007


I know a cat named Way-Out Willie,
Got a cool little chick named Rocking Millie.
He can walk and stroll and Susie Q
And do that crazy hand jive, too.

sorry, just reminded me...

they should teach other stuff in nightclubs e.g. photoshop, foreign languages, juggling...
-- po, Jan 10 2007


I used to do my math homework around dawn, before school, in a 24 hour bar, interrupted by the occasional posse of giggling night crawlers who ended their night there. It was grand.
-- ping, Jan 10 2007


I once ventured into a bar in Geneva heralded by a sign labelled "Pussycat Club" - if only someone had translated the language of that particular (and from my naive understanding, innocuous) nightclub's sign, a great deal of embarrassment could have been avoided.
-- zen_tom, Jan 10 2007



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