Lets take a look at the journey i took while learning ASL.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not an expert on ASL! I'm still learning, and I'm documenting my learning for school purposes :)
What made me want to learn asl?
I was first introduced to ASL through books! One of my favorite books, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, had a Deaf character who spoke ASL (Or more specifically, Alf Sign Language ;) ). He made me rather curious to learn more about Deaf people and their languages, and that's why I decided to study ASL for my In-Depth project!
The first meeting
By my first meeting, I had almost memorized the alphabet! Each letter has a different sign. You can check out the video I used to learn it in the Learn Some Signs section of this website!
I had some trouble finding a mentor at first, but the other people doing ASL found an awesome mentor and let me join them. We started learning greeting signs, like hello, nice to meet you, what's your name, and much more.
If you really want to check out some greeting signs, you can check out this video! I'm not going to put these signs in my Learn Some Signs section because I suspect some of my fellow ASL mentees will do so, and I want to mix it up a bit.
I had some trouble finding a mentor at first, but the other people doing ASL found an awesome mentor and let me join them. We started learning greeting signs, like hello, nice to meet you, what's your name, and much more.
If you really want to check out some greeting signs, you can check out this video! I'm not going to put these signs in my Learn Some Signs section because I suspect some of my fellow ASL mentees will do so, and I want to mix it up a bit.
The next meetings - signs and history
The next few meetings we mostly focused on fingerspelling and signs! The signs we learned were related to greetings, activities, time/calendar, people/family, emotions, food, colours, school subjects, filler words/exclamation, clothing, and school supplies. Looking back on it, wow, that's a lot of stuff we learned! But, it's a tiny piece of the whole language.
We also watched a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes. It was very interesting, and spoke about Deaf Culture, their history, and how sign languages came to be. I watched it while eating chocolate chips and carrots, and it was actually quite an enjoyable experience! I will link the documentary down below if you want to check it out.
We also watched a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes. It was very interesting, and spoke about Deaf Culture, their history, and how sign languages came to be. I watched it while eating chocolate chips and carrots, and it was actually quite an enjoyable experience! I will link the documentary down below if you want to check it out.
Wrapping it up
Sooner than I'd expected, we were nearing the end of this In-Depth project. For our second to last meeting, we were lucky enough to have a Deaf special guest join us and teach us a bit! His name is Levi, and he elaborated on the signs and grammar we already learned, so we had a more detailed understanding of them. He also shared some stories about what it's like to be deaf. Since he was telling us the stories in ASL, we didn't know a lot of the words, but Levi made sure to make it so we could figure out wat was being said. For example, when he was talking about driving a car, even though we didn't know car-related signs we could still get the story because he pretended he was using a steering wheel and stuck his head out the window and stuff. It was very funny and engaging, and we learned a lot!
For our last meeting, we played a Kahoot! It was a very fulfilling experience to learn ASL, and I hope I can continue to learn more in the future!
For our last meeting, we played a Kahoot! It was a very fulfilling experience to learn ASL, and I hope I can continue to learn more in the future!