Interpersonal communication: receptive and productive NZSL in interaction
Interpersonal communication tests live, two-way NZSL: you initiate and sustain conversation, ask and answer questions, take turns, and repair breakdowns. The examiner looks for meaning negotiated between signers, not a memorised monologue. Receptive and productive skills are judged together: you must understand your partner and respond in a way they can follow.
Core rules
- Set up people and places in signing space, then point back to the same location; keep referents stable.
- Grammar lives in non-manual signals: raised eyebrows and forward head tilt for yes/no questions; furrowed brows for wh-questions; headshake for negation.
- Use backchannels (nodding, facial response, small signs such as YES or PLEASE-REPEAT) to show you are following.
- Repair meaning explicitly: ASK-AGAIN, SLOW, FINGERSPELL, 'I don’t understand', or repeat back what you think you saw.
- Match register to the person and setting: signs become more careful and fingerspelling more frequent with unfamiliar people.
- Keep eye contact; looking away breaks the conversational channel.
Worked example
You meet a Deaf peer at a school event. You sign 'YOUR NAME WHAT?' with furrowed brows and a slight head tilt. They fingerspell a name you do not catch. You do not nod. You sign PLEASE-REPEAT and lean forward. They fingerspell again; you repeat the handshapes back and ask 'YOU FROM WHERE?' with wh-marking. They sign a town and point to a location on their left; you point to the same left space when you refer back to it. Reasoning: the wh-question needs the correct non-manual marker; repeating the fingerspelling checks reception; the shared left-space anchor makes the town referent easy to track. Repair is part of the assessment, not a failure.
Traps
- Nodding politely when you have not understood; this ends repair and loses comprehension marks.
- Signing English word order and mouthing full English sentences.
- Letting referents drift around the signing space.
- Dropping question or negation non-manuals.
- Turning away to think, or watching your partner’s hands only and missing facial grammar.