When I was deciding what to do for my passion project, I knew I wanted to do something that is both unique and will be useful in the future. I thought about learning a new language, learning how to cook or even how to play the piano, but none of them settled for me. So I finally decided to learn something I’ve always wanted to know. I focused my efforts on learning American Sign Language.
I started by learning some important basics of signing. First, I found out that you should always sign with your dominant hand as it looks more professional and fluent. The other thing I learned was how important facial expressions are when you are signing. You can’t use a sign that means you are sad when you have a smile across your face. Your face should match what you are trying to communicate with your hands.
Finger spelling is another asset to knowing sign language. It is used to communicate names, titles and other things that are not specified by a particular sign. Finger spelling is exactly what it sounds like; you use the American Sign Language signs for the letters of the alphabet, to spell out the name or title.
American Sign Language is a broad topic, so I had to pick a few main areas to focus on. I learned some basic words and phrases that allow me to communicate without using my words. I focused on learning numbers and letters, family, actions and requests, emotions, places, food, and animals.
When I first decided that ASL would be the topic of my project, I had much bigger goals in mind of how much I would be able to teach myself in such a small period of time. I thought I was going to be able to sign full sentences, but I was very wrong. To be able to do that, I will have to work at this for much longer than the time I have had.
My high expectations led me to some disappointment when I started to discover how complex this topic could be. But now that I am finished with this project, I am happy with what I have been able to learn.
At this point I want to continue to learn ASL, to eventually be able to communicate thoroughly with people who are unable to speak.