ASL E-Portfolio: October 2011

Kelly Smith

Carl Schroeder

ASL-201

23 October 2011

My progress in American Sign Language

There is one question that is asked “What do you think is the best thing about your progress in ASL class? And why?” There are several things that I think are the best thing about ASL class. I like the fact that we have a deaf teacher this year. I enjoy all the activities that we do in class like getting to start my E-portfolio, free-signing, learning about classifiers as well as HMHD. I appreciate the fact that we are covering signing spaces. It’s only been four weeks since we started and I feel like I have learned more in the four weeks then all last year.

First thing that I like about class is the fact that our teacher is deaf. I was really scared at first, knowing that I will go from very little signing to signing overload. After meeting Carl and getting to know a little bit about his background I wasn’t scared anymore. I got to thinking and realized that this would be very beneficial for me in the end. Our school used to have a Communications course that was offered every once in a while. This class helped all the ASL students get used to communicating fluently in ASL. When I found out that there would be no talking in the class I got excited because this would be the communications class that we were going to be missing out on since they no longer offer it.

The E-portfolio is something that will help me in my development as I work on getting my Bachelor of Arts in American Sign Language/English Interpreting; I am also going to Minor in American Sign Language Studies. The E-portfolio gives me a chance to put everything I know about and have learned and put it in one spot. When I was told that I was going to be using this down the road for jobs etc. I got really excited because if I start this now I can have a lot of things that I can use down the road and get to pick out what I feel best showcases my abilities. I like the fact that I can look back at everything I have done and can see how much I have accomplished in such a short amount of time. I can’t wait to see what else I will be learning and where it will take me.

I think that the free-signing activities are so beneficial to me. It is so important in ASL to close your ears off and bring everything to your eyes. I feel that being able to shut off your brain for just a few minutes and sign anything that comes to you without thinking, and never stop is a great way to train my brain to be in ASL at all times. If I’m going to be an interpreter I need to be constantly thinking in ASL. If I am translating for someone I can’t stop to think about what the sign is, it should be in the back of my mind and I should instantly know what it is or things won’t move very fast and no one is going to want me to translate for them if ASL isn’t on my brain instantly.

Classifiers are 65% of ASL. I had heard of classifiers, but I never knew much about them. It makes so much more sense now. When we first started talking about using classifiers, I didn’t understand if they were so important why we are just learning about them now. I think I might have understood them better if I had learned them last year but I don’t think I would have been able to grasp the complete concept. It is something that takes time and knowledge of words to fully understand why we use them and the proper way to use them. I have been focusing on incorporating them into my conversation while it is difficult to reverse my way of thinking away from the English way of SVO to the proper way in ASL of OSV.

When using HMHD I really had a difficult time figuring out the concept behind it but then as we dissected the first unit in the book by using this system it started understand it. Being able to break up the signs into separate pieces helped me understand more about the sign then I thought I would know. I never knew about the 7 basic hand shapes and how they get incorporated into the signs until they were properly explained to me. Separating each sign and being able to distinguish which part of the sign is the hand shape, your palm orientation, location of the sign, facial expressions and the modifier movements. Once I get these down I feel that my skills can improve tremendously by understanding why we do what we do with the signs, when to repeat the sign and what it changes to when it is repeated.

Our last teacher never discussed signing spaces with us and I can’t figure out why. This is so important in ASL. I was always showed that a sign goes in a certain spot of the body and a certain way. When we started discussing signing spaces it made me nervous but made a lot of sense. How will someone know if you are mad if you don’t show it? You can use facial expressions but they can only take you so far. Knowing that it’s ok to bring your signing space down when talking to one person, it gets bigger when sitting at a table or in a group, it gets even bigger when talking to a classroom and goes into utilizing all of your signing space to talk to a big audience. I was always afraid of putting my sign in the wrong spot and no one would know what I said. This helps me understand how someone signs and being able to understand them better. I’ve talked to my neighbors on several occasions and tried to get what they were saying but when they are signing in a smaller space I could never fully understand what was being said I understood most of it and was able to get what they were saying after a while. It’s so much easier for me now when talking to them. I feel better now when I ask them for help because I understand a lot more of what they say to me and I don’t have to have them repeat what they’ve said or have to guess what they’re saying to me.

I can’t wait to see what else we are going to be learning this year. I feel that I am going to be so much more prepared when I transfer to Western Oregon University next fall then I would have been with our other teacher. It may be a lot more work then I planned on it being, but it is so nice being able to understand all of the essential elements of ASL that I’m not sure I would have known until later on in my studies.

“Sign is a live, contemporaneous, visual-gestural language and consists of hand shapes, hand positioning, facial expressions, and body movements. Simply put, it is for me the most beautiful, immediate, and expressive of languages, because it incorporates the entire human body.”- Myron Uhlberg (critically acclaimed and award-winning author of a number of children’s books, oldest hearing son of deaf parents).