American Sign Language Analysis

The reason I am striving to become a sign language interpreter started back in 2002. My church had a dance group that involved dancing and signing at the same time. This was something that really intrigued me at such a young age. So after I joined, I ended up falling in love with ASL. That led me to learning sign language on my own, and soon after I decided to go to George Brown College to enroll in the ASL & Deaf Studies program full-time. It may seem like a very cliché thing to say, or one may think that I need to give a better reason instead of “I love ASL”. But that is the God-honest truth. American Sign Language is incredibly fascinating to me, and I want a career where I am constantly exposed to ASL and to Deaf (and hearing) people using

It is my pleasure to express my strong support on behalf of Mrs. Niesha Washington-Shepard’s desire to enroll in the Master’s in Sign Language Education Program (hybrid) at Gallaudet University.

I am the eldest of seven kids in my family. I am hard of hearing with the assistance hearing aids to help me to communicate and I read people lips well. The skills I have helped encourage people and allow them to strive for greater things. As an occupational therapist, one needs to encourage patients to hold an object or throw a ball and help them to achieve their goals. I always wanted to learn the American Sign Language, even though I know how to speak. Since the age of ten, I found sign language to be fascinating and always wanted to learn it. I had a tutor who taught me sign language, and now I am continuing to learn more. In addition, knowing ASL will help me communicate with deaf-mute

ASL is more than a language; it is a miracle. I find myself often perplexed by the difficulty that must have come with making a language solely from hands. It is amazing that there was a nationwide speaking of the hands for the deaf community and anyone who is interested to learn can join in easily, but only if they can hoop over some of the languages major challenges. In the article “Why is Learning American Sign Language a Challenge?” by Professor Mike Kent, he discusses the top 5 ASL challenges he has come across.

Over the summer semester in ASL 101 I wrote about my deaf experience that I had on the class level between sign and dines, signing with Jeff and in class. This semester my deaf experience grew with the class, outside encounters, and the hearing culture. As my confidence grew the more I expressed myself with sign in order to practice, whether or not I was surrounded by people who would understand me. I have many theories on why people respond to deaf culture and ASL in the way that they do but the overlaying idea is that people need to give up their prideful attitudes in order to become more open minded and communicate with others that they may not communicate with otherwise. We as people need to learn to share ideas throughout different cultures in order to further ourselves as a society.

For people not able to attend sign language courses, there are many tools available to help them learn ASL on their own. Books and DVDs are great initial resources for anyone interested in learning sign language. Books that teach about ASL contain step-by-step photographs or illustrations

There is a plethora of information about American Sign Language that I was unaware of. Growing up, I had never known anyone that was deaf, nor taken any classes about sign language. Therefore, some of the information I was able to learn throughout the class surprised me. As a start, it was disappointing to discover that deaf culture and sign language are only passed down through deaf families and residential schools. This can limit the amount of knowledge a hearing person has about the deaf culture, and this knowledge is important because it is still relevant in today’s day and age. In fact, the topic should come up in more schools across the country. Another aspect of sign language that surprised me was the importance of facial expressions.

In J. Parrish Lewis’s article “Stop saying you sign badly” he talk about how you have to make time to learn ASL and practice it, and that saying you’re too busy is never an excuse. There can always be easy around it to be able to learn without having to rearrange someone’s entire schedule. He talks about how you can even look up signs during commercial breaks. I have found myself making a lot of excuses for not attending more deaf socials, not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was scared, intimidated and mostly lazy. If I keep justifying these excuses I’m going to end up losing the opportunity to not only better my skills but make long lasting friendships. I believe the way the deaf culture encourages everyone to stand up for themselves, be proud but most of all be positive is one of the main reasons why I want to keep pursuing studying the language, so I can be seen as someone who not only respects but loves this culture. My ultimate goal with pursuing sign is to be able to successfully possess all four qualities of the diagram developed by Charlotte Baker and Charles Cokely, once I posses the linguistic, social, audiological and Political attitude that it takes to be part of the Deaf culture, I will be accepted and seen as once of their own, and accepted with opened

American’s Sign Language (ASL) is truly a fascinating language. I have spent the last ten years learning English and other languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, and Vietnamese. ASL shares a vast similarity to those languages such as expression-in not writing, but rather in gestures- grammars- placing preposition, verbs, person is a unique way. On September 8th, 7:00 pm- 10:00 pm, I watched a show called Criminal Minds on MBC DRAMA, Channel 1759. This program is not a regular American television program; it is a program specialized in high-definition subtitles for Korean’s Dramas. To not be able to listen to the tone of actors and actress expressed for each scene, it is tough to settle on expression that is being displayed just by looking at

I am dedicated and passionate towards ASL and everything revolving around it. I will contribute encouragement, humbleness, and dedication. I will work hard at what I do in order to become the best I can be, and as well better others in any way possible. I hope to fully immerse myself in Deaf Culture blatantly out of curiosity and respect, I want to learn as much as I can about the deaf. ASL has become a hobby for me, it has sparked an unimaginable interest in the culture and language. I have found that this is truly something I love, and will continue to cherish it for a long time. Ever since early middle school, I have struggled to find something I am considerably good at by my own standards. ASL gives me confidence, I feel as though

To be able to understand another person you have to know the language or you have to learn it. If the social context is easier to learn it affects development because someone could learn faster if it was easier. When reading through the material it made me remember that I always wondered if dogs have their own language or if they just know how to communicate. I have a little white dog that is a Cavapoo named Toby, although I always think and say that he isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box in reality, I actually think he is pretty dang smart. He knows many names of people, including mine, my boyfriends, my mom, and my dad’s and he knows the names of the two dogs he gets to go on walks with Gunner and Grady. We can tell he knows the names because

American Sign Language is a visual language using hand movement and facial expressions. It used between people who are deaf or hard of hearing. ASL is used in America like other countries use their own form of sign language. It is used mainly in the US and some part some parts of Canada. It is also used as a foreign language in high schools and colleges.

The goal of the paper “Evaluation of a Psycholinguistically Motivated Timing Model for Animations of American Sign Language” by Matt Huenerfauth [1] is to build a mode for duration of sign, location of the pauses and length of the pauses in American Sign Language ASL. The author was motivated by improving the understandability and naturalness of the 3D animations of ASL, and the interesting observation of the psycholinguistics literature study on timing and pauses in ASL. Huenerfauth design a two algorithms Sign-Duration algorithm, and Pause-Insertion algorithm for calculating sign timing and pauses location\times consecutively. He evaluates his approach by conducting an evaluation study on human participant. The results of this paper shows

I intend to work with students who are speech-impaired. Working with speech-impaired students would fulfill one of my lifetime goals. Specifically, I desire to teach elementary students who are hard of hearing or deaf that desire to have verbal skills. This desire has come from the love of learning new languages as a child. But, the deaf culture and American sign language have always fascinated me and seeing the world from their perspective, I want to help them be able to guide them through the struggle and aid them the ability to communicate, not just with their community but others around the world.

2 I’m not an expert in sign language, but I’ve been interested in it for several years. My father is the treasurer for a group of deaf and hearing-impaired people, and I’ve attended some functions with that group. At those times, I had a chance to learn bits and