How do you actually study ASL?

Question

Yo, college student here. I'm currently taking ASL2 and I've been wondering since ASL1 how do you actually study ASL? It's not like verbal languages where you can study the written language, or when you're stuck on something you can just look it up. So, how do you actually study ASL? Do I just watch people sign? I really want to improve my signing ability, and it's hard to do if you don't know how to study the subject. A little off topic, but does anyone also know any sources to study/learn ASL sentence structure?

Answer 1

A course in ASL Linguistics would actually help you learn the structure of the language and help you to understand its phonology, origins and development. Also, although ASL is not a written language, there are ways to write ASL. It's called 'glossing' and there are texts that will actually gloss an ASL sentence for your to study. Not only does it have the signs used in the sentence but contains 'diacritical' markings to help you understand what kind of question may be shown (ASL has several different kinds), whether you use your dominant or non dominant hand, etc. The Green Book series is excellent for this kind of study. it's actually a very interesting topic to me.

Answer 2

Quinn,

I suggest that you develop a group of students from your class into a Study Group and meet regularly to study together. When I taught ASL I always encouraged my students to form Study Groups. Most students find the support of their classmates invaluable in studying, reviewing, and learning ASL. Certainly you should have notes from your classes that you can be reviewing. Are you using a textbook with video support materials? That would naturally have exercises for students to complete outside of class as a form of practice, review and "studying." Does your teacher provide vocabulary lists or you can create your own and transform the vocabulary to flash cards that you can review on your own or with your Study Group. Certainly you need these types of support activities to study and reinforce what you are learning.

With regard to grammar, again the textbook you are using should have specific grammatical information for each lesson. If you want to refer to an outside source I suggest you look up the (rather old book) called ASL Phrase Book by Lou Fant. You can probably still find this book on Amazon or somehow on the internet. This book also has an accompanying video or CD that demonstrates the signed sentences. This book would be a good resource for seeing and learning the sentence structure of ASL

I hope these tips may help give you some ideas about how to "study" ASL. It is true that ASL has no written form but you can use what is called "glossing" to write down the signs and even to organize the signs into grammatically correct sentences. Usually your textbook will include information about glossing but the general principle is that each sign has "a name" that is "a gloss" which represents its meaning. For example, BOY, GIRL, MOTHER, FATHER, LIKE-something, ALIKE/SAME-AS. If you need more than one word to capture the meaning you use hyphens so for example LAST-WEEK is one sign not two, TWO-WEEKS-AGO is one sign not three separate signs. Get the idea?

So you can write down the grammatically correct sentences you are learning in this way.

LAST-WEEK ME GO-TO MOVIE. ENJOY ME. and so forth

Some teachers do not like encouraging students to write glossing because they believe that it influences students to think in English and they want to encourage thinking in ASL but this method doesn't work well for all students. Some students may need some support in learning from their first language. So there are different schools of thought among teachers of ASL about this. I have found that adult students need and benefit from having some support in learning from their first language. Although in general I also strongly support that most all communication with students in the classroom be in ASL only with limited writing on the board for clarification at times. This is called the Direct/Immersion method of learning but along with this I believe students, outside of class, need support from a clearly written textbook that explains grammar etc.

I hope this helps you and best wishes in your sign language learning.

Regards

Bill N.