Fingerspelling practice

This page is from the John A. Logan College Interpreter preparation program. It contains 9 pages of words that include all the letter patterns in the english language. If you click the link "View Flash Movie" is has some good fingerspelling advice as well.

ASL PAH

Here you can subscribe to a great email newsletter put together by Bill Vicars. He is the guy from the ASL University. He has a wonderful teaching style. If you are not interested in recieving the group email you are able to look through past issues here. I would recomend signing up, there is one issue though, it seems that if you click "subscribe" on the site it takes you to the "unsubscribe" link. So if you want to subscribe just send a blank email to this address: aslpah-subscribe@topica.com

Fingerspelling Ain't Easy

I couldn't agree more. I enjoyed this article. It is about teaching young deaf children to fingerspell early. It is a good encouragement for all of us who would like to wear a name tag for the rest of our lives and invent a sign for everything! Along with this document there are many links to others you may find of interest here.

Exploring Tenses in ASL

This is a detailed paper explaining proper use of tense. The writer shows why this is extremely important.

ASL glossary

This is a site that will tell you which online dictionary has the sign you're looking for. It doesn't include all the online dictionaries, but it should save some time.

Deaf Newspaper

Thank you Angie, for sharing this link with me. Its another one I haven't seen before. It includes Deaf news, classifieds, links and more.

My guestbook

Ok everyone here is your chance to let me know who you are and what you're doin' here! Yes, You! You may click here or at the bottom of the page on the pen. Thank you! -Michelle

Gallaudet University

Located in Washington DC, Gallaudet is the world's only university in which ALL classes and programs are designed to accommodate the deaf and hard of hearing. Their web site includes a history of the university and its founders.

Martha's Vineyard

Deaf culture education should include a bit of history about Martha's Vineyard. At one time most everyone there used sign language. This page gives a short version.

What is it like to "hear" a hand? You have to be deaf to understand.

Written in 1971 by William J. Madsen, a professor of journalism at Gallaudet University. His poem was translated into 7 different languages.


What is it like to "hear" a hand?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to be a small child,
In a school, in a room void of sound--
With a teacher who talks and talks and talks;
And then when she does come around to you,
She expects you to know what she's said?
You have to be deaf to understand.

Or the teacher thinks that to make you smart,
You must first learn how to talk with your voice;
So mumbo-jumbo with hands on your face
For hours and hours without patience or end,
Until out comes a faint resembling sound?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to be curious,
To thirst for knowledge you can call your own,
With an inner desire that's set on fire --
And you ask a brother, a sister, or friend
Who looks in answer and says, "Never Mind"?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What it is like in a corner to stand,
Though there's nothing you've done really wrong,
Other than try to make use of your hands
To a silent peer to communicate
A thought that comes to your mind all at once?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to be shouted at
When one thinks that will help you hear;
Or misunderstand the words of a friend
Who is trying to make a joke clear,
And you don't get the point because he's failed?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to have to depend
Upon one who can hear to phone a friend;
Or place a call to a business firm
And be forced to share what's personal, and,
Then find that your message wasn't made clear?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to be deaf and alone
In the company of those who can hear --
And you only guess as you go along,
For no one's there with a helping hand,
As you try to keep up with words and song?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like on the road of life
To meet with a stranger who opens his mouth --
And speaks out a line at a rapid pace;
And you can't understand the look on his face
Because it is new and you're lost in the race?
You have to be deaf to understand.

What is it like to comprehend
Some nimble fingers that paint the scene,
And make you smile and feel serene,
With the "spoken word" of the moving hand
That makes you part of the world at large?
You have to be deaf to understand.

Interpreter Competency evaluation

Well, I've scoured the web and I'm having a tough time finding anything which I have yet to cover! Not to worry, it would take a very long time to put to use all the pages I've already posted,(The ASL University is one I am really enjoying ) and of course the internet never stops growing. Please use the comment button below this post if you know of any sites I've missed that you feel would be helpful to add. I'm certain there are some hiding.
The link in the title of this post might be of use to those who are fluent or nearly so, and would like to assess themselves to see if there are any areas they might address.

Jess and Sandra 

That's me--  

Indigenous Signs for Cities

Neat, Just what the title says. cities from many countries.

ASL University

Can't leave this site out. There is a lot to learn here. Both wonderful and free. Includes step by step lessons to learn ASL. I like the testing pages and with a little adaptation you could print them and use them. I also enjoyed the fingerspelling practice pages (50 pages!!)

ASL to English

I found this site enlightening. What would it be like to teach a deaf child to read and write? Certainly most deaf are very capable of learning to read and write in English just as most of the hearing are.
As we are learning ASL so many issues have come to light for me. What concepts are more difficult to learn if you can't hear? What issues effect the deaf that are not a big deal for those of us who can hear? How do the deaf feel about trying to communicate with hearing people who often don't even try to understand? It is so important that we try to understand deaf culture as well as the language.

Cool School

Cool School is Cyber Oregon Online. They offer high school credit for their online ASL courses (4 semesters offered total.)
$345 for one semester for non Oregon resident, $295 for Oregon resident. I can't recommend them, because I haven't tried it. I'm glad to see it offered though. They state that your current high school district maybe willing to pay them, and thats true if they don't offer the course themselves. To get to the ASL class click "courses" then "World Languages" then scroll to ASL.

Hey, Anthony Sign something! 

ASL at Redbud Library 

Here are a few of our friends from our ASL class at Redbud Library. 

About Signing Numbers

Here are some helpful rules for signing numbers.

PBSkids Arthur's Sign Design

Here's one for the kids. There is a fingerspelling and numbers printable. A page that lets you formulate a question and then shows you how to sign it, and a page which shows how to fingerspell your name.

Fingerspelling!

Thank you Johanna, Don't know how I missed this one. It is a good one and the images are very clear . I need all the help with fingerspelling I can get. ( It helps if you can spell!)

Linton Free printables

Wow! Found some really nice pages to print today. This one is especially good. Thanks to Teresa Linton who offers these free for educational purposes. Some pages contain signs for holidays that I do not celebrate, however I see nothing wrong with learning how to sign the words any more than, learning how to spell them!

Speech fun site

This page has a long list of printable files. They are quality pdf's which should print very clearly but are slow without a high speed connection.

K8AIT

This site has signs for many aviation and scientific words such as hypothesis!

Classifiers in American Sign Language

Most of the texts we have don't explain classifiers separately
or in groups of handshapes. When you click on this link you'll see the classifiers grouped in handshapes, you then click the shapes to get a short description of some of the uses along with a floating hand to show you the shape. I found this to be helpful. If you have a high speed connection you can then watch a flash movie with a person showing a lot of signs as examples. However there is no interpretation so you may not know what you are seeing signed.

ASL literature

I was thrilled to find this site today! They show short movies of ASL poetry, stories and more. With my slow connection I only watched a few. I'll be back though. Memorizing a short story or poem is a great way to add to your vocabulary and gain some speed if you're new to signing.

Growing up without hearing.

These are stories presented by Gallaudet University. They are designed to introduce you (and your children) to what it's like to be deaf. You'll find them easy to read and comprehend and a nice lesson in deaf culture.

Question: How long does it take to learn Sign Language?

Click here to see!

Julia and Diane 

Someone else's blog.

This is a nice short story about the joy of communication.

Seasigns, Nope not seesign......

Did you know scuba divers use sign language? Makes sense.

Scroll

The page is getting long! To see previous posts scroll down to the bottom and click on October.

Jessica, Orville, Tom 

Me, Nina, Julia 

Devon, Vicky, Julia, Helen 

Friday

Several members of our class got to attend the Deaf (+friends) social last night. I was too beat to go but the kids had a great time. Julia came running in to tell me that 5 of her new deaf friends had gotten together to give her and Paul their name signs. Hers is the sign for "J" but with both hands, which is very cute because she is left handed and has had a hard time not signing "J" backwards. It's very fitting. Paul's is the sign for "Play" also very fitting and he is also very happy with his name sign.
We all learn so much more when we have a chance to communicate with our deaf friends. It is frustrating at times but there is no better way to cement those signs in your head than to use them when you NEED them! Learning ASL is becoming such a joy to us! At first it seemed like taking on a lot, when with four kids, I'm already rather maxed out, but it has been wonderful and a benefit to us in many ways.

Sign Writing

Sign writing is like it sounds, the written form of sign language. This is an extensive site and deserves a good look. It includes children’s literature, King James Bible Passages, Dictionaries, Newsletters, Lessons, and several downloads. Don't give up if it looks confusing at first just find the lessons page and spend a few minutes there. It will start to make sense. I find the site a little difficult to navigate though, so if you can't find what you're looking for email me and I'll try to help.

Sign Writing email

Very cool. From the Sign Writing site, Lets you send an email using sign writing. Send a few to us. @ mybraincells@yahoo.com

ASL dictionary

This is another web browser. A little slow to download with my connection but it has a lot of signs.

Fingerspelling fonts to download

ASL software at Amazon.com

Medical ASL phrasebook

A very useful site not only for medical signs but for everyone. It's an interesting read for the beginner.

Koko

On the subject of ASL Koko the gorilla comes to mind almost as often as Helen Keller. The kids may not have heard of Koko though so call them over and share this link with them, they'll love it!

ASL in elementary school

This is an adorable site with a class learning to sign.

Teaching your baby to sign

Here is some interesting information about teaching your baby/ toddler to sign. I think it's a great idea. It is much easier than you might think. Many of the signs that you would want to teach a preverbal child are very natural. For example the ASL sign for "you" is to simply point at the person you are talking about. To say "I" or "ME" you point at yourself. You just have to be faithful about useing the sign everytime you use the word. You do not need to spend any money on books or videos. A vocabulary of 25 or so signs is enough to avoid a lot of frustration when your child does not have the verbal skills to communicate. Communicating with your child this way (signing and speaking) often results in the baby begining to sign at 6 to 8 months. Sign language uses both the right and left sides of the brain so while some people are naturally stronger on left brain subjects and some the right. Sign language seems to be easier for either. You can make a list of signs that would seem helpful and find them online. I will hopefully soon post many here. Some suggestions would be:

{I, Me} Blanket,
You, Bed,
Mine, Get,
Yours, Come,
Want, Go,
Need, Please,
Eat, Mommy,
Drink, Daddy,
Sleep, Happy,
Toy, Sad,
More, Mad
Hurt,
Yes, No, You get the Idea.

Mt. Konocti 

gg wiz

If your computer is not a dinosaur, this is a nice page. A good tool for fingerspelling practice. This is the page that the boggle page came from. It lets you interpret a phrase that is fingerspelled to you animated by flash. For me its much harder to interpret fingerspelling than to sign it myself. Which by the way I'm not too great at either. I'm getting there though! Jessica gave me some really good advice. She said not to say the letter as you see it but say the sound it makes, so that by the time you get to the end of the word you haven't forgotten what the beginning was!

Lesson Tutor

Lesson Tutor is a large site with a lot of valuable information. I'm not a big fan of their pictures when it comes to learning a new sign, so I don't use this site to look up a sign I don't know. However I have found that there are a great many signs that I have seen, but don't have a firm hold on. In this case the pictures are just the right clue to jog my memory and help to affix the sign for me.

Alphabuddies printable coloring pages

Here are some printable coloring pages to teach the alphabet and fingerspelling.

Boggle with fingerspelling

This is a great concept. I'm afraid in reality it's not quite great. The number of specific letters seems totally random, so that you may get 8 G's or only one vowel, also the program does not recognize actual words so if you say its a word it assumes you are correct. However, it is definitely worth a try.

Rose family ASL website

Here's hoping I'm doing this correctly. As I understand it I type the link in the link box and then paste the code in the template?? We'll see...
It's an excellent ASL vocabulary site often children are presenting the signs.

Giving this a try...

I'm going to try my hand at this. I'd welcome any advice (on blogging that is) My goal is to put up a page about sign language and our family's experiences with it and with our deaf friends. I would really like to have an extensive list of links to quality related pages and maybe products. We'll see what we find. Soon as I can get a new camera I'll post some pictures of us and others at our sign language classes. Presently all four kids and I are taking two classes, one is at our public library on thursdays and is directed towards children/beginners, and the other class is a theocratic ASL class taught at our Kingdom Hall on fridays. There is homework/studying for both classes. Then we are also able to sit in the ASL section at the hall on sundays and watch the talk interpeted in ASL.