Hey signers are you wanting to know what our Learn How to Sign Accelerated program actually
looks like? Well in today's video we are going to share with you an excerpt from one of our courses,
so without further ado, let's get learning how to sign accelerated.
Okay let's get started in talking about grammar. First we're going to be talking
about the parameters of sign. So the parameters of sign are consisting of five different parameters.
We have hand shape, we have palm orientation, location, movement, and non-manual signals. Each
one of these is going to be incorporated into a sign and really for non-manual signals, it's
specifically to assign or maybe to a question or to a response and this will make a little bit more
sense once I give this example. So we're gonna take the sign 'sad' just like this. Okay, so we have
the hand shape first, which is a five hand two five hands okay, so we've covered the hand shape,
the five hands. Then we're going to have the palm orientation and that's where this palm is facing.
So is it facing out? Is it facing in? Is it facing different directions? Well for the sign 'sad', it's
facing in towards your body. Then we have the location where is it in proximity to your body?
Well it's right in front of you but if you had the sign 'my' it would be on your body versus
'dad' on your forehead. Then we have the sign um or the parameter movement okay
and this is moving down your body right here. So we have our hand shape the fives,
we have the um location in front of you, the movement going down, and then the palm orientation
going towards you. So this last one that I was talking about right here non-manual signals;
that's everything to do with your body language your face, your eyebrows, how your body is moving,
and when we sign the word 'sad' we're going to show a sad face, and that's our non-manual signal.
There are tons of signs that have non-manual signals and like I said before, they're also
in questions and responses in sign language that I'm going to show to you in just a second.
Okay, remember how we just talked about non-manual signals, this is in signs that have to do with
negation and affirmation. So in your vocabulary you learn signs like 'yes' and 'understand' but what
you probably noticed in there is I also did this along with it. I did an affirmation with
the sign 'yes' and with the sign 'understand'. This is showing that it's an affirmation sign. It is
so important to include that non-manual signal in that as well. Now let's look at the sign 'no' and
'don't understand', you'll see 'no' with that negation and 'don't understand' with that negation as well.
Notice when I sign 'understand' and 'don't understand' the hand shape, this one is the same, the palm
orientation towards your body is the same, the movement is the same, and the location is the same
but the only difference is this non-manual 'understand', 'don't understand'. Those non-manual
signals are essential in making the whole entire sign. Yes, it could still be understood if you did
yes like this but, putting yes with it as well makes it a complete sign, so make sure whenever
you're learning these signs you also include those non-manual signals within the sign itself. Okay,
now that we've learned negation and affirmation let's take some of the signs that we've learned
and we're going to put them in a yes/no question format. Now what I want you to understand
is that ASL is not English so whenever I'm going to teach you these sentences, I am putting them
in ASL order. You're going to learn how to do this throughout this course, so let's start off really
small with our yes/no questions. When we ask a yes/no question when asking just an individual
person, we're going to point you to them because we're addressing the person that we're talking to,
then we are going to ask the question what we want to be asked the sign 'are you hearing'? 'Hearing'
now those non-manual signals that we just talked about are going to come in handy right here
because when we ask a yes/no question our eyebrows go up, our body leans forward,
and then we're going to end it with what we call a closing signal
back to you. So when we're asking are you hearing you are going to sign, 'you hearing you?'
Notice my body leaned forward, my eyebrows went up, I put the who I'm talking to,
what the question is, hearing and then I pointed back, hey are you? So
and if you are hearing, you would respond yes, that affirmation the head nod of the non-manual
signals. Now let's take another question. Do you understand? We are going to start it with 'you
understand', and notice my eyebrows are up but my head is also nodding like this
so, I'm doing two non-manual signals within the same sign showing a question and showing
an affirmation then end it with, are you?
So are you understanding?
Okay, now I'm gonna give you a few questions and I want you to think how you set this up and then I'm
going to show you after I give you a few seconds to think about it so let's look at the sentence.
Are you deaf? From what I just taught you how would you set this up in ASL structure?
Okay did you sign it 'you deaf you'? If you did you got it right! Let's look at this sentence
Are you learning sign language? How would you sign it?
Okay, you should have signed 'you learn sign you'? If you did, awesome!! You could have also signed
ASL as well last question, are you hard of hearing. How would you sign it?
Okay, it should have been, 'you hard of hearing you'? Once you feel comfortable
with this section we have a short little quiz to check your understanding. Now go to the quiz.
We hope you learned something new today and can't wait to see you at Learn How to Sign
Accelerated and until next time keep learning how to sign.