This past week we finally overcame the technical difficulties and Reba and I had 2 1-hour lessons! Since we used Zoom for our classes, I was able to record the sessions so that I could go back to reference if I forgot a sign. Since I only had a handful of sessions with Reba, we are mostly working on vocabulary and learning new ways to ask questions.
One of the most interesting things I learned were the sign for our family members. As we are trying to get to know one another, Reba asks me questions and I try to reply back by fingerspelling. She would then teach me the sign for that particular word. She always tries to make a connection to the sign so that I can remember it more easily. For an example, when talking about family members, the signs for males are above the nose near the head while the signs for females are under the nose near the chin. An easy way to remember is that a while back, men would wear hats while women wore bonnets and tied it under there chin. I really enjoyed learning about family members because I knew it’d be useful and also because all the signs made sense.
This also meant that I had to make sure to sign in the right place. The signs for “right”, “sister” and “brother” are the same and the signs for “fine”, “mom”, and “dad” are also the same but are referred to different parts of the body. It was interesting to see words that had different meanings could have such similar signs. After a couple of lessons, I taught my family some of the new words I learned during our FaceTime calls and they also enjoyed it.
Reba and I also spent a good chunk of our time working on numbers, time of the day, and days of the week. We did an activity together where she would sign a number then I would have to sign the next number. Afterwards she would ask me questions that involved numbers just so I could practice more. I will still occasionally mess up the sign for three. The proper way is to hold up your thumb, first finger, and middle finger, but I keep holding up my first, middle, and ring finger. Although most people use them alternatively, in ASL, it must be signed correctly, or it can be confused with the letter “W”.
Some of the most useful signs I found during the sessions were “understand” and “slow”. Since we communicate through sign and I am still very new to the language, I have to ask Reba to slow down when she fingerspells. I still have to practice more because I need to translate each letter and then put them all together to make the word. Whenever I do understand something, I can sign that to her so that she doesn’t have to elaborate. Occasionally, there were some questions I couldn’t understand even after some repetitions. In that case, Reba will write it down on a white board to clarify. I’m excited to continue learning more vocabulary words and recognizing the questions she’s asking me.
Comments