Free Sign Seven

Free Sign Six

Free Signing Five

Week Five Video

Free Signing Four

Grid Exercise: Example

Grid Exercises

Grid Exercises

During week five in ASL 201, we performed and activity called Grid Exercises. In this activity an individual uses directions to identify which boxes of the grid certain signs are located in.  This activity is great for building skills in direction giving, identifying perspectives, and team work. It also helps to expand skills in clarifying instructions. In the week five video I use the following grid when I am giving instructions.  

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Eat
	Milk
			Cop
	Red

Copy-Signing

Copy-Signing

Copy signing is an activity used to help students learn how it feels to sign. It is designed to help your mind and hands get warmed up, as well as get familiar with making new hand shapes, facial features, and using your entire sign space. When you copy-sign another signer, you mimic every move that they make. You must be careful not to mirror, but copy their movements. If you mirror them then you will be signing from the wrong perspective. This activity also helps you practice signer perspective. In addition, you can learn new signs if you are able to understand the overall context of what your copy-signing.

Mid-Term Essay

Mid-Term Essay

For our take home mid-term exam, we are assigned to write a paper about ASL.  The question to base our paper on is “What do you think is the best thing about your progress in ASL class? And Why?”  After thinking about this question for a few days, I realized that the best part of my progress in ASL is my overall comprehension of the language; my ability to understand what other people are signing. This ultimately will help me become more fluent in ASL, in turn, helping me in many other facets of my life. My entire Essay is attached below.

Essay

American Sign Language: My Progress

            Since I was young, I have been an artistic and extremely passionate individual. I have always been a person who expresses herself through artwork and music. This creative side of my personality has led me to be compassionate, as well as open minded.  Throughout my education I have always admired the beauty and expressive style of American Sign Language (ASL), which rooted a desire in me to learn this underappreciated and under recognized language. Only to build on my desire for this language, I met the man who is now my husband and decided on a career in nursing. With hearing damage since childhood, my husband only further confirmed my interest in ASL and I could also see the benefit it would have in my career. It is my progression in ASL that will bring me to be more prepared for further hearing loss in my family, have a higher skill set in my career, and will add another aspect of creativity and expression to my life.

                As I began my college education, I immediately enrolled in an ASL 101 course. Knowing only the manual alphabet, I had much to learn. During the initial stages of learning ASL it was simple to remember the mechanics of signs. Also, finger spelling became a more comfortable part of ASL; however, it was difficult for me to comprehend what other people were signing. I understood all of the parts (arbitrary signs, classifiers, things that were finger spelled, etc.), yet I was having trouble taking all the information in a once. The first year that I studied ASL gave me a decent vocabulary base and a great understanding of Deaf culture. Unfortunately, I felt unqualified in forming proper phrases to sign and I was not confident that I knew what other people were signing to me.        

It has been the full immersion of the ASL 201 series that has allowed me to push away my nerves and gear up my mind for learning.  Attending an ASL class in which only signing is used, has forced me to form better sign phrases when I need to communicate, as well as taught me to understand what other individuals are signing. It is the skill of overall comprehension in signed conversations that I feel is the best part of my progress in ASL.  Even when I do not understand every sign, I am able to identify familiar signs and use the context of any conversation to understand, as well as, expand my ASL vocabulary.

Without developing the ability to comprehend what others sign, I would not be able to properly use or understand this language.  It would be the equivalent of memorizing all the parts to an engine, but having no knowledge of how to assemble them and make the engine run. I am proud that I can finally understand what others are signing, even if I get lost in the process on occasion. Comprehension is the best aspect of my progress, because it is what will allow me to continue to better my skill level in ASL.  Ultimately this will lead to my becoming fluent in ASL, which will positively impact my life in many ways. My family’s preparation for hearing loss, my career, and a creative outlet, are only to name a few of the sectors in my life that ASL will positively influence.    

 Recent research has shown that approximately one in every twenty Americans is deaf or hard of hearing, amounting to millions of people nationwide who depend on visual language for communication. This number is only on the rise. While my husband may not be considered deaf or hard of hearing, I consider him becoming part of this statistic a possibility. While he has only a small amount hearing damage in his left ear, he has lost more than 50% of his hearing in the right ear due to a ruptured his ear drum during his childhood. In addition, his job in both farming and iron working require him to be around loud and heavy machinery. While he takes measures to protect his remaining hearing, I believe learning ASL is invaluable in case of more unexpected inner ear damage, or extensive age related hearing loss. Being fluent in ASL will prepare me to have a way to communicate with my husband if he undergoes more severe damage to his hearing.

Furthermore, being fluent in ASL will be a unique quality in the medical field. As our Hispanic and Russian communities grow larger, many nurses study these languages to help them prepare for a career. But as larger numbers of nursing students study these languages, it will ‘flood the market’ and their abilities will no longer set them above another applicant for a job. Being fluent in ASL on the other hand, is not common and is extremely valuable. This will help to set me apart in terms of career skills and I will be able to communicate with the deaf who are often not the first community of people thought of in terms of foreign languages.

Lastly, I can already see myself using ASL as a creative outlet and I am sure that my use of it will only increase. Currently, I help teach songs to children in ASL at church, translate my own songs to sign at home, and when I am excited I find that signing while I speak is far more expressive than just using regular hand gestures. Ultimately, I am delighted with my advancements in ASL. My ability to comprehend conversation in 100% ASL has opened a new door to learning.  It is the best aspect of my progress thus far in my ASL education and I am excited to further my knowledge and skill base in this language.   

Free Signing Three

Free Signing Two

Free Signing One

Week Four Video

ASL Proper Sign Order

ASL Proper Sign Order

As many of us know, each language has their own system for word order in sentences and phrases. English operates on a subject -verb -object design, or SVO.  ASL on the other hand, functions on an object-subject-verb or OSV design. The following are both examples of how to transform an English statement to a proper phrase in ASL. The statements will be colored to help see the differences. (object-subject-verb)

Example 1:

English: Annie loves red apples.         ASL: Apples red, Annie loves.

Example 2:

English: Kris enjoys watching scary movies.     ASL: Movies scary, Kris enjoys watching.

You can see, now that the sentences are colored, that the black lettering or “red” and “scary” are actually the classifier used to describe the noun or object. In the second example you can see that the other black word “enjoys” is describing how Kris watches movies, but is not the noun phrase classifier.

Arbitrary and Descriptive Sign Parts

Arbitrary and Descriptive Sign Parts

Every sign has an arbitrary portion as well as many possible descriptive parts. Together they make up a proper noun phrase. The arbitrary part is the portion of the sign that has no particular meaning. It is the “vocabulary” part. On the other hand the descriptive part of the sign in called a classifier. This is used in every noun phrase to further explain what is being signed.

For example:

  Classifiers are grammatical part of ASL. They are important in forming a non-fragmented phrase. The wonderful aspect of classifiers is that they are limitless. While the arbitrary sign remains the same, each person uses different classifiers to describe and explain the sign phrase. In addition, the use of classifiers can help people gain the meaning of an unfamiliar arbitrary sign without asking what it means. It can also help individuals who no nearly no ASL to understand parts of a conversation.



Week Three Video

Signing Space

Signing Space

It is important to remember that you are not confined to the sign space immediately in front of your body during conversation. Sign space is only limited by how far your arms can reach. The bigger your message or the crowd you’re signing too, the more of your sign space you use. Here are some examples:

 Very large group or strong message

•  Yelling 
• Signing from a stage 
• Extreme excitement

 

Medium group or Slightly Strong Message

• Signing in a classroom
• Singing to a group

     

      
Small Group or Normal Message

• Small group                                           
• Normal conversation size                            

One-on-One or Private Conversation

•  Personal/Quiet Signing               

Free Signing

Free Signing

Many of us have experienced free writing before, especially in a classroom setting. Free writing gives you a chance to write whatever is on your mind for a designated period of time. The only rules are:

·         There is no stopping to think

      ·         Don’t correct mistakes
      ·         Write quickly
      ·         Don’t stop writing until the time is up

You simply write quickly for several minutes straight. This helps you become comfortable with writing and if practiced enough it will always be something you can do “second nature” and not have to think about. During the third week in ASL 201 we practiced this technique. After we understood what it was about, Carl had us start Free Signing.

It is safe to say free signing caught us all with our guards down. Although we did not sign for as long as people usually write for, it gave us a chance to sign without worrying about fixing mistakes, thinking of better signs, or pausing for anything. During a session of free signing you just keep signing no matter what. If you cannot think of anything, you just keep repeating a sign until something new comes to you, or finger spell a sign you don’t know. This exercise was intimidating at first, but I can see that it is helping me with many things like:

·         Remembering forgotten signs

      ·         Becoming more fluent
      ·         Practice finger spelling
      ·         Getting comfortable signing in front of groups
      ·         Letting the signs come to me so I do not think…I just do

Second Week ASL 201: Reaction