[Jill] Hello, I’m Jill. Welcome to ASL Stew! (hand slap)
(music)
So, today I wanted to talk about what do you do if you want to practice your sign language
but you don’t have anyone to practice with in person?
I would suggest the power of the internet and I’ll give you a few suggestions.
First, I would say use the internet like social media.
For example, Jenna and I have a Facebook page called ASL Practice Pals.
I will leave a link for that down below.
So that page was set up where you can introduce yourself.
Say “Hi, I’m learning sign. blah, blah, blah” and then you can try and get in contact
with other people and set up some sort of video chat like Glide.
I think that’s the sign for Glide. You can do it that way
or find some other way to video chat with each other. Practice that way.
I’m sure there’s other, Facebook, Twitter, other ways you can get in contact with some people.
Someone who is interested in practicing with you. That would be great!
Second I would say, if you can’t find anybody to practice with in person,
you can still practice yourself.
Just practice signing every day.
You can look in your book and practice signing that way.
Look in a mirror, or you can just walk around and sign to yourself.
That way you’re at least getting that expressive sign language skill.
It’s important that you try to include sign language every day.
Even a little bit, a lot; that’s up to you.
But, the more that you practice, even if it’s just by yourself, the more it becomes kind of innate.
It becomes more natural to you. You feel more comfortable signing.
If you’re not comfortable and you wait every once and a while
until you’re actually with another person, then you can become kind of rusty.
If you’re concerned about your receptive signing skills,
that they might diminish if you don’t practice with somebody, there’s a few options.
One thing that you can do is like I said again, the internet. Try and talk with someone that way.
You could look online, look on YouTube,
other websites that have people using sign language in videos.
That way you can at least watch the video. Try and understand what they’re saying.
Perfect if they have captions. You can and figure out what the captions are saying.
Umm, you can look on different websites that teach sign language.
At least you’re seeing people using sign language.
It’s not exactly a dialogue like you would in person, but still you’re watching somebody
and getting that receptive skill and you become more comfortable watching sign.
Again with the suggestions, if you don’t have anyone to practice with in person,
one thing I wanted to mention about that is if you’re interested in learning sign language,
there’s a few things.
One, make sure that if you’re going to be practicing with other people…
you can practice with other people who are so to speak at the same level as you.
Maybe they’re just learning.
But at the same you want to try and work with people who are above your level.
That way they can give you feedback and that’s really important.
If you only work with a person who is at the same level as you,
that means the two of you might miss some of the mistakes that you would make
because both of you don’t know together.
Another thing is if you want to learn sign language it’s really important you put in an effort.
It’s fine if maybe you’re young or you in a kind of isolated area,
you don’t have a lot of contacts with people.
That’s perfectly fine, but think of the reason why you want to learn sign language.
If you want to learn sign language to just kind of learn the basics,
to kind of maybe help customers or something.
Something simple like that.
Just talking with someone online or learning by yourself, that might be sufficient.
But if in the future you want to be an interpreter
or work with Deaf people every day as your career or that type of situation,
then you’re gonna have to put in an effort.
Try to find an in person class or even an online class.
Some way you can maybe work with a professor or Deaf person.
Someone who’s gonna help you to develop your skills.
Or you can try and find local Deaf community you and be involved in.
That way you can improve yourself which is just so important
if you want to become fluent with your signing skills. You really need to have it.
So try to get into a class or the Deaf community or something like that to help your skills.
So, hopefully this has helped you a little bit.
I will leave some resources down below of different ways of learning sign language online.
I will leave our Facebook page if you want to check that out.
Maybe you can introduce yourself and then meet some people
and get some practice with your sign. That would be cool right?
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Really appreciate it. See you in the next one. Bye!
[Jenna] … we can work together. Soon there’s going to be a conference
between Deaf and disabled.
So we’re going to be hosting a conference
and there they’re going to have a multitude of different presenters…
[Jill] I like it. I wouldn’t buy it itself, but I like it.
[Jenna] Now is egg nog! (bell ding)