Surprisingly, learning American Sign Language numbers is much harder than learning numbers in any language, including japonese. You can't just put individual fingers up to indicate what number you are trying to say if the number is ,say, 67. Unless you have several extra hands, it just takes time, effort, memorization and practice to learn how to sign ASL numbers. This part of my learning was the most difficult so far, but it taught me many things about myself and also about all the hard work that deaf or hard-of-hearing people put into their everyday lives just to be able to communicate.
There were so many things I learned this week that I feel the need to share and explain them all to you. First, I learned that sign language is so much more difficult than I initially thought, and I think harder than every other normal person thinks it is. I also learned that my project is going to take a lot of time and I have to devote myself to it and make time to practice and read every single day, because I do not know how difficult each goal is going to be to achieve. Third, I learned that you have to be concious of every single detail when you are signing. For example, if you are signing a quantity, the palm of your hand should face away from your body while you are signing the number, but if you are just signing a number, then the position of your hand varies depending on the number you are signing. Not only that, but when you are signing a number, the position your hand faces is changing practically every 10 numbers. Finally, I learned that I need to delve myself into this project more in order to completely perfect what I am learning.
So, on to my experiences this cycle. The beginning of this week kicked off the start to the spring sport season, including track, which I am in. So it has been even more of a struggle to keep up with learning ASL, but I have gotten through it with only some exhaustion and a possible cold. Since my learning went so well last week, I decided to use similar techniques because memorizing the alphabet is similar to memorizing numbers. At first, I went on to my new favorite site, signingsavvy.com, and I read the basics on the numbers and general descriptions of what to do when signing specific numbers. The first time I read all the rules on signing numbers, I could not even think straight. I am not only expected to overcome my terrible hand-eye coordination by signing, but I also have to think while doing it? Nevertheless, once I watched a video tutorial on how to sign the numbers, most of my confusion was gone.
The first three days were devoted solely to learning the numbers through the use of websites, readings, and videos on Youtube. The videos were the most useful source, because when learning to do anything by yourself, it is nearly impossible to just read about it. The first day I learned the numbers 1-20, the second day I learned the numbers 21-40, and the last day I learned the numbers 41-50. My initial goal was to learn numbers from 1 to 100, but I had to change that due to difficulty of the task and time constraints. Sign language, like many other languages, is based off of the first 20 numbers, and then builds off of that. So, I tried to focus more on memorizing the first 20 than anything else. Then, it was somewhat easier to learn the signs for 21-50 since I already knew the basics.
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| Random Number Generator |
The following days I spent doing almost exactly the same learning techniques as the previous week. First, I found a random number generator that gave me five columns of numbers from 1-50 and I just signed all of them at my own pace, and if I wanted to change the numbers I generated more. Then, I started siging every ingle number I saw. Numbers on math homework, numbers in science, numbers on my computer, the date (Which has rules for signing also), and just anything that I saw a number on. Like the previous time, this helped me with the memorization of the numbers and also helped me to think about ASL quickly; making it almost an instinct. Finally, I had people tell me random numbers from 1-50 and signed them. Or if I heard a number I would sign it off the top of my head. After doing all this, I felt completely comfortable with signing the numbers 1-50 in ASL.
Signing 1-30:
There were so many things I learned this week that I feel the need to share and explain them all to you. First, I learned that sign language is so much more difficult than I initially thought, and I think harder than every other normal person thinks it is. I also learned that my project is going to take a lot of time and I have to devote myself to it and make time to practice and read every single day, because I do not know how difficult each goal is going to be to achieve. Third, I learned that you have to be concious of every single detail when you are signing. For example, if you are signing a quantity, the palm of your hand should face away from your body while you are signing the number, but if you are just signing a number, then the position of your hand varies depending on the number you are signing. Not only that, but when you are signing a number, the position your hand faces is changing practically every 10 numbers. Finally, I learned that I need to delve myself into this project more in order to completely perfect what I am learning.
Hey Jenna, I felt that this post not only told about the numbers, but explained that like other signing it would take time. I like that you said that it would take patience to learn to sign overall. I also liked how you talked about your difficulty with learning to sign, which also shows your audience that it's not the easiest thing to learn. I think that this post,is the one that will really influence others to learn this language.
ReplyDeleteReally Good Job, Amber
Your posts are always really good Jenna. You go girl! I like how you always use visual aids in your posts (and inspired me to do that too (don't tell McPerlman shhhhhh)). Your video was very good, even though I couldn't see your beautiful face (especially since your face can effect what sign you're doing).
ReplyDeleteNot only are you talking about your adventure learning sign language in your posts, but also talking about how it's harder than you think. I think a lot of people who don't know anything about sign language is that it's arbitrary hand movements that are associated with words and would be really close to English and really easy to learn.
Keep going! :)
I don’t Jennarally comment on the blogs of people I don’t know well, but I Feltespecially adventurous today. I see that you overcame what sounded like quite a roadblock when it came to signing numbers, I don’t know how many that is, but whose counting. Anyway I’m glad to see that you have found a method that works for you when it comes to memorizing this complicated form of communication. If I may offer one more, you seem as though you are struggling with hand-eye coordination and the limited dexterity of your fingers. So, to help try to fix this problem (no matter how small it may be) I would suggest looking up exercises that you can do at any time to train your fingers to be more agile. Off the top of my head, you can use baoding balls, which are quite helpful in accomplishing such a task as exercising your hands. Also, you might want to incorporate signing into more of your everyday life, as I have found that writing about/describing things in my head when I am just walking really helps me to write in an official and serious capacity.
ReplyDeleteI hope this has helped,
Noah Gilly