It is all in the Hands!

Over spring break I spent a little extra time on my Independent learning project. Since I did not have any assignments due, I thought that it would be good use of my time to focus some attention to getting one step closer to communication without sound.

By this point I am compiling a decent vocabulary of commonly used words, body parts, moods and colors. I do not remember them with 100% proficiency yet but, they are there and with more practice the memorizing will come.

Because I am developing a pretty good vocabulary, I decided it was time to challenge myself and little more. I wanted to see just how far I had come and how much further I need to go to accomplish my goal. Also, what are words if I can not put them to use? So, over spring break, I decided to work on common phrases and the Pledge of Allegiance.

I used the internet to find a list of commonly used phrase that I could learn in ASL. The list of phrases I found, provided me with 12 phrases such as, I am going home and I feel very sad. I learned that when you put a phrase together in ASL you are not presenting it the same way you would if you were speaking it. So what do I mean by that? Well for instance, I would say to you ” I am hungry and want something to eat.” but, when it is signed it translates to I-hungry-food-want. This is interesting to me. I did not realize that those that used ASL did not form their sentences in the same way we would if we were speaking. I think this would be much harder for the hearing world who know the spoken language and use it predominately than it is for someone who does not hear and has never heard how a sentence is commonly put together. Anyway, I worked on these phrases and feel pretty comfortable with them.

I was also able to find the pledge online and work on it. This was not to hard I just used the picture and did the signs it was showing. I did have to go to YouTube and find a video that showed the pledge as well, because some of the signs were hard to figure out from the picture alone. Once I was able to see the signs demonstrated it was much easier. I can not say that I could do it on demand but I am getting it down. Practice makes perfect, right?

As I move forward, I want to continue to work on conversational ASL and become comfortable with that.