My interest in leaning ASL began when my daughter was born. I had read many years ago about the benefits of teaching sign language to babies, and I always knew that I would teach my children to sign. I started signing with my daughter Finley when she was about 5 months old, and when she was around 8 1/2 months old, she made the sign for bird. Signing was her main method of communication for the first year-and-a-half of her life, and the signs were slowly replaced with words as she learned to speak. She would always fall back on signing to clarify a word when we didn't understand what she was trying to say. Still to this day (she is now 2 1/2 years old), I teach her new signs for new words, and we review her old signs throughout the day as opportunities present. She always felt heard and understood, and I think that explains why she just never went through the terrible twos.
I began learning from baby signing books that I picked up, and that certainly gave me a great base of knowledge, and everything I needed to teach her the key words she would be using. But I didn't feel like that was enough for me. I was so in love with this language and amazed how people could talk with their hands, I needed more. I enrolled in an ASL class at a local community college, and I plan to go as far as I can with it.
I am pretty independent and I love to learn on my own whenever possible, but Sign Language is one of the few things I have not been able to teach myself. It is not something you can pick up just from reading a book or browsing the web. Its nuances and idiosyncrasies are such that you absolutely need to learn from someone who has an intimate knowledge of the language (preferably someone who is deaf). I am just beginning my journey to hopefully one day becoming fluent in this beautiful language, and I hope this blog will help explain and clarify the many things that make ASL so unique.
This is a video of Finley making the sign for light. She's about 10 months old here.
PLEASE READ: About my Blog...
I am an ASL student at Algonquin College in Ottawa. The program uses the "Signing Naturally" textbooks, which are really quite difficult to follow. This is where my desire to create this blog came from. I wanted to create a resource that would act as a supplement to the textbook to fill in the blanks, and maybe just explain things in a different way to hopefully help my fellow students. I also wanted this to be helpful to people who want to learn ASL but who don't have the textbooks, so I have tried to re-explain key things from the text.
If you are a student, the posts have been labeled according to the level of ASL and the unit of the book. If you are not using the book but simply want to go through the posts in order, follow the labels entitled "Post".
I have found that there are many different signs that are used, and they vary from person to person, and from teacher to teacher. So I have included any differences I have learned, but this list is by no means comprehensive. I am sure I am not aware of all of the variations, so I have just posted what I know. Please do not use this site to override anything that you know. I am only just learning and am by no means a pro. That said, I am more than happy to hear any comments or suggestions, so please let me know if I have posted anything that is incorrect, or if you would like me to do something differently. This blog is intended to help you, so if there is a way it could be more helpful, I sincerely want to know!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
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As Finleys grandmother I can surely attest to the fact that signing has made such a difference in my relationship with my beautiful grandaughter. Being able to communicate with her at such an early age ,knowing that I understood that she was asking me for something she could never have put into words at that young age just brought me closer to her.I so admire Danielle for taking the time and effort to learn ASL and for sharing just a small part of her knowledge with me.Although Finley is chatting up a storm right now I still love to watch those tiny delicate hands signing. Its a beautiful sight and a beautiful language.
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