Customer Reviews

A Basic Course in American Sign Language

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I used this book in an adult evening course at The American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Connecticut. ASD is the oldest school for deaf people in the US, as well as, the birthplace of American Sign Language(ASL). The book combines both basic sentence struture and useful vocabulary words. An example is Lesson 1, which covers sentences with predictive adjectives and 40 vocabulary words. So at the end of lesson 1, I was able to sign sentences such as She is beautiful. & I am tired.

The book also gives a good introduction into the deaf community and culture. As a parent of a hearing impaired son, this book gave me the ability to see useful results at the end of each lesson. I found this book very effective.

After a semester of Siglish, I took 4 semesters of American Sign Language (ASL) in college as my foreign language requirement. The course was superby taught by a husband and wife team, both who worked at residential schools for the deaf for over 25 years. This book was the text for the first 2 semesters and I still have it on my shelf.

Extremely detailed, lots of exlplainations and superb drawings. The text is spiral bound, which is awesome for laying a book flat while practicing signs. If you carry this book with you in a backpack, however, you should keep the book in a protective bag... the spiral binding makes the book very vulnerable to pages ripping away while being jostled in a backpack.

This text should not replace classroom instruction. There is no text that can replace a real human being explaining how one sign looks exactly like another depending on context, facial expressions and body language. You can easily embarrass yourself by assuming you can figure out the drawings and go about conversing in ASL with someone w/o the benefit of real one-on-one practice with another human being. Signs like "prostitute" and "shy" are almost identical to the learner and if you're talking to someone and you say "I'm shy," you might end up getting a bunch of raised eyebrows if you don't do it just right. Signs for "lemon" and "lesbian" are also very closely similar... you can imagine the types of mis-understandings that can occur if you don't learn these signs properly.

This warning is not meant as discouragement. If you have already learned the manual alphabet and find yourself to be quite adept, ASL will probably be a breeze to you... at least it was to me. Some people really take to it and others don't. Spoken language is not my strong suit and I was a late talker to begin with. If my college didn't offer ASL as a foreign language requirement, I would have never graduated. Regardless of your aptitude, study and practice is essential for good, rapid signing... and more importantly, signing that can be understood. Even if you become a wiz at signing, you must have practice at reading other people's signs or you won't be able to have a conversation. It's been 8 years since my last ASL class and wlithout anyone to practice with, I've forgotten a lot of signs, so I constantly refer to this book... it's a great reference for those wanting to freshen up on forgotten signs or to use to learn in the classroom or with a study partner.

Here is a sign language book which provides so much information on ASL grammar in such an easy-to-learn format. With a book like this on the market, there is no reason for a hearing person to think that learning ASL grammar is too difficult. The rules are laid out and explained simply, with many exercises. And, of course, there are signs to be learned. Want to get started speaking the language of the Deaf community instead of just speaking English a different way? Then buy this book and get started.

if you are looking for a sign language book to help you learn this is the number one book. It gives you lessons for easy to remember words. It is a beginner to every day use sign book. It is a must buy if you are interested in sign language. Iam currently taking my 2 course in american sign language it helps me understand sign and remember the basic sign language to help me anytime. It has a spiral bound for easy access and a purfect study guide. A must have.

I borrowed a copy of this book some years ago and I thought it was fantastic! This the best book I've seen that explains ASL grammer. I would highly recommend it to the intermediate sign language learner.

For a beginning ASL student, this is an excellent aid. The illustrations of signs show positions and movements clearly. Sentence structure examples are concise and clear, with good practice dialogues and exercises. Vocabulary words are well-indexed and so far everything I've looked up has been in the index. Vocabulary might grow faster if related terms were presented together, but each lesson introduces clearly all the words needed to practice the concepts just introduced.

As a beginner, until I got this book I didn't trust my memory and was afraid I was practicing some signs inaccurately. The illustrations are a great help in reinforcing what I saw in class. (In re-reading this, I notice that I used "clear" too often. But that's the main benefit of the book, so I'll let it stand.)

This is a great book to buy if you want to learn ASL. Not only do you learn basic vocabulary but this book also teaches sentence structure for ASL. It's a fantasic way to learn how to communicate with those in Deaf culture.

I HAVE JUST FINISHED TAKING THE FIRST LEVEL OF ASL CLASSES AT THE COLLEGE I AM ATTENDING AND I HAVE FOUND THAT THIS BOOK CAN BE VERY HELPFUL IN LEARNING ASL, BUT IT DOES HAVE IT'S DRAWBACKS. SOME OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS WERE A LITTLE HARD TO SEE SO I FOUND MYSELF MAKING THE WRONG HAND SHAPES AT TIMES. ALSO THE BOOK ONLY HAD ONE SIGN FOR EACH WORD. FOR EXAMPLE THE ENGLISH WORD "RUN". THERE IS A SIGN FOR RUNNING WATER, RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, RUNNING AWAY, ETC. THE BOOK ONLY HAD THE SIGN FOR RUNNING AWAY. THE BOOK DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH SIGNS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF THE WORDS. IF YOU ARE TO BUY THIS BOOK ONLY USE IT TO ACCOMPANY A CLASS OR A LESSON FROM A PERSON WHO IS EDUCATED IN ASL. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO LEARN ASL WITH ONLY THE USE OF THIS BOOK. WITH ANY LANGUAGE YOU HAVE TO NOT ONLY READ WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING, BUT ALSO SEE IT IN ACTION. I RECOMMEND THE RANDOM HOUSE AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE DICTIONARY IF YOU WANT TO SEE MULTIPLE SIGNS FOR SINGLE WORDS.

This book is awful, as language-learning books go.

First, one wonders how an educational publisher can get away with selling the same text for 25 years. By now, this book must be generating pure profit.

Second, the small, black-and-white illustrations are ambiguous. Bent arrows point in odd directions. The same arm, hand, or finger appears more than once in the frame, with no indication of where the motion begins and where it ends. (Better books use two illustrations per sign, to show the stages.) On the alphabet and number reference pages, some signs are drawn with the correct orientation (either palm-in or palm-out) and others, with the wrong orientation.

Third, there isn't much explanatory text. The book consists of illustrations and lists of sentences to sign. There is little written advice about facial expressions, positioning of the hands, movement of the fingers, etc.

I was required to buy this book for a class. I despaired at the possibility of learning ASL with this book. A trip to my local library confirmed that there are newer, more thorough, and more useful ASL books out there.

One of my latest projects has been a revival of an attempt I once made to learn American Sign Language, and this time I found the right book. This is an extremely well-illustrated, step-by-step, unhurried tutorial on the third most widely-used language in the United States. It's been a help to me these past weeks and I owe virtually all the progress I've made to what's in here. If I can learn from this then anyone can. I enthusiastically recommend it.