Story About Me

As I was reading and studying lessons on practicing and understanding sign language for beginners, I stumbled upon a page where the author talks about what can really help with beginners is just multiple paragraphs about random topics just to help with signs. As an example paragraph it says to write about yourself. So I took this as an opportunity to better my signing and tried it out.

Format:

HI I ZACH SEKELICK
NICE-MEET-YOU.
I HEARING (I am not deaf).
I STUDENT [name of school].
I LEARN LEARN SIGN. (Double signing a verb adds “ing”)
TEACHER NAME
CLASSES

It is short and simple, but because I did this I was able to learn new signs for words, and I learned a new rule for grammar that by double signing a verb it gives the verb an “ing”.

Lessons 1-5 Vocab

I found on this website a goo lesson plan on just learning new signs. There are about thirty lessons on this website with each lesson having its own set of vocabulary, so for every blog post that I do about this I will be doing five lessons.

So I started from lesson 1 and from the get-go it was pretty difficult trying to remember what signs were for which. It took me a while just to know half of the words when I am trying to quiz myself. Even if did remember them, there was still a pause before I actually signed the word. However after some time I got the hang of it, but not really proficient, yet I still moved onto the other four lessons when I needed to. It took me about two days to fully get through all the signs and to somewhat know what to sign, and that is where I am now. I will continue to practice these signs for another two days at least and then move onto the next set.

Lesson 1                                                                                                                                                    Lesson 2                                                                                                                                                  Lesson 3                                                                                                                                                    Lesson 4                                                                                                                                                    Lesson 5

Fingerspelling

Fingerspelling is just what it sounds like, signing words by spelling them out. The signs for each letter is usually the same alphabet that signers grew up learning when they were younger. For me and other signers from America we would use the American Finger Spelled Alphabet, but around the world there are different fingerspelled alphabets that are used. The American Fingerspelled Alphabet consists of 22 handshapes that when held in certain positions and/or are produced with certain movements represent the 26 letters of the American alphabet. Usually signers would fingerspell items such as people’s names, places, titles, and brands. However, those are not the only times when to use them as when being specific and there as not such a sign for it like a certain type of flower, a person may fingerspell the name of the flower. Also, whenever a person can’t remember a sign for a specific word or phrase they can fingerspell what they are talking about.

Sign Language Grammar

The word order of ASL is very similar to that of English which is subject-verb-object. However, ASL does not use “to be” (am, is, was, were) verbs nor articles (a, an, the). ASL tries to keep it as simple as it can where the less signing needed to get a point across the better. Just like in English, there is active and passive voice in ASL, however, since ASL does not use “to be” in order to use passive voice the word order changes to object-subject-verb. An example in active voice is “he stole the book” where a signer will sign “He Stole Book”. Now in passive voice in sign it is now “Book, He Stole” which means “The book was stolen by him”. Also if a person wants to talk about how many of something as in a specific amount, the person would sign the object of the sentence and his/her fingers would indicate the amount.

Practice

In order to help me with my practice in fingerspelling and getting a grip in remembering what the signs for each letter was, I practice for about thirty minutes for three days on a random word generator. I would set up the random word generator by giving me a list of ten words each, and I would fingerspell each word quick enough and without any mistakes to make it look fluid like I am signing a phrase. If I did mess up by either not being quick enough in choosing the right sign for each letter or picking the wrong sign for a letter. I would restart from the beginning of the list and try it again. An increase in quickness and memory can be seen as the difference in the first day from the third day was huge where by the third day I felt like I was good enough to advance.

Sign Language: Lessons

I found pretty good playlist on YouTube about learning sign language for beginners. On the channel, Expertvillage, they have fifteen videos about this topic, and the signer, Melissa Schenk, teaches the viewers common phrases that people may need to say. In about half of the videos she gives a situation that people might come in contact with, and she teaches phrases that people would normally say but in sign from starting a conversation with a stranger, talking about the weather, and ordering food from a restaurant. I have watched the first two videos and having been only learning sign for a week and a half, it has been rather difficult for me just to remember how to sign these phrases. I have had to re-watch those videos multiple times just to get an understanding of the motion of the hands and trying to remember them.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5F823409AB4E4542

Sign Language: Alphabet

To start of learning sign language, I need to learn how to sign the alphabet. There’s not to much difficulty with these signs, but just being able to remember these right off the spot is going to take some practice and dedication. I have started practicing for a little bit, also, but I do forget some letters as I go through the alphabet. Probably in the next day or so I will get comfortable with it, and be able to sign it easily. I have been looking on the internet for resources to help with sign language of phrases and words, and I found two good sources of content to help me. Duolingo is app that gives people the chance to learn different languages with specific lessons, vocab, and quizzes based off the languages, and they have a course for sign language. Also YouTube seems like a it will help me as I can watch videos of other people teaching sign language.

Sign Language: Background

Sign language is a language which mainly uses manual communication to convey meaning. This involves simultaneously combining hand shapes, movement and orientation of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to convey ideas of the speaker. However, just like spoken languages, sign language expressions vary among different groups of people as English is different from French which is different from Chinese which is different from every other sign language community. Sign language usually expresses ideas rather than just single words. For example in ASL (American Sign Language) The Linguistics Society informs people that,  “The hand’s orientation and the direction in which it moves indicate who is asking whom. English requires three different words to express ‘ask,’ the person asking, and the person asked. In ASL the complex meanings ‘I ask her’ and ‘she asks me’ are each expressed by a single sign. A single ASL sign can express even more. Adding a circular movement to these signs produces signs meaning ‘I ask her for a long time’ and ‘she asks me for a long time’ (1). In sign language many actions can have small variations just to me different things. Compared to English, ASL can be different grammatically as when using question words such as “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why” those words come either at the end of the sentence or both at the beginning and the end.

 

 

Perlmutter, David M. What Is Sign Language? Linguistics Society of America,                                    http://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/Sign_Language.pdf.