- Welcome back to my channel,
the best place for a new signers, intermediate signers,
and struggling signers.
In today's video, I'm gonna talk about
why you may be struggling to understand other people
when they sign to you and what to do about it.
So if you're looking for some help
in improving your receptive signing,
or understanding other people when they sign to you,
definitely keep watching.
(chiming)
Many struggling signers are super confused
as to why they don't understand people
when they sign to them.
You've been learning. You've been practicing.
You've been doing the work.
And yet here you sit, watching this video.
going, "Oh my gosh, what are they saying?"
And you're freaking out inside
or maybe you're freaking out outside.
Okay, or maybe you can understand them,
but you have to like put it at like 0.25 speed,
the slowest speed you can get,
and you rewind it and watch it over and over again.
And then you could understand it.
But either way, you're left confused and frustrated
and upset and maybe a little bit angry about it.
(laughing)
Just know if this is you, you're not alone
and there is a solution to this and you can do the solution.
Now, why is this happening?
Why are you learning these signs and practicing these signs
but not able to understand people?
Like, it doesn't make sense, right?
Let me explain why,
the possibilities of what this is happening.
So when we go into a language,
you want to learn the language,
you want to be able to communicate.
So you think, okay, the more words I know,
or in this instance, the more signs I know,
the better able I will be to communicate,
have a conversation with somebody, right?
So you learn all the signs you can,
you practice and you practice and you practice.
But when it comes to having a conversation,
remember, conversations are back and forth, right?
You've only practiced the forth.
You haven't practiced the back part of signing.
And that is the main crux of the problem.
We think that if we know how to sign the sign,
we will naturally be able to understand them.
And this happens a lot
because many language programs, and particularly ASL,
they focus solely on expressive signing,
expressive meaning you are doing the signing,
and not necessarily on the receptive part.
Expressive is not the same as receptive.
Learning it expressively is not the same
as understanding it and learning it receptively.
So if you understand that seeing a sign
while you're signing it, if you think about it,
think about the perspective change that is.
If I'm signing, so you're gonna look over my shoulder
and see me signing.
Okay, it's gonna look completely different,
as if was seeing somebody else sign the same thing.
All right. Completely different experience.
When you're signing to me,
I'm seeing your hands go like this, okay?
But when I'm signing to you, I'm not seeing,
I'm not staring at the front of my hands.
I'm not even really staring at the back of my hands,
but the perspective is different.
Okay, so understanding a sign expressively
does not translate over into receptive.
So if I can't understand somebody when they're signing to me
then I can't have a conversation.
There is no back and forth,
like we talked about just a minute ago.
Okay, another reason for this is,
so you're practicing all these expressive signs.
You're learning all these signs and you're practicing them.
It would be the same as you saying,
I'm gonna make a lemonade with just lemon juice and water.
So you are missing a key ingredient.
The lemons would be the expressive signing
and the water would be practice, okay?
So you're missing the key ingredients here.
You've got the lemon juice. Good.
So if you just had the expressive signs
and you never practiced,
it would be just be like sucking on a lemon, right?
But I know you know that practice is important.
That's why you're here, duh.
So you add water to it. Now you have lemon juice.
Lemon juice is tasty, but it's not lemonade, right?
You want nice lemonade, fresh from the ballpark.
So you need the receptive part.
And in lemonade speak, that would be the sugar.
You want it to taste so good and sweet and yummy, right?
So you need to add in the receptive signing.
So the best way to do that is to put your sugar in,
first, receptive signing, then add water,
stir that up together.
So you've learned the signs receptively, you practiced it.
Now it's all incorporated and not separate.
It's not like a clump of sugar at the bottom
and the water at the top.
It's all mixed in, never to be parted from again.
Well, until your body digests it.
Then you're going to put your lemons in,
learn it expressively, those same signs.
Then you're gonna put more water in to practice it.
And now you have delicious, delicious lemonade.
That is how you learn signs. Receptive is king.
I know it's not as glamorous, as near as fun as expressive.
Of course you want to sign.
That's way more fun, to be like, I can sign.
I can sign. I'm amazing, bah, bah, bah.
Right? Super fun.
But you aren't just here for the short term fun, right?
You're here for the long game.
You're here to learn a language for a real reason,
to use it, to communicate,
to have a good old time with it, right?
So because of that, you are gonna say, "Receptive is king."
Receptive learn it, then expressive learn it.
Now you're ready to have a back and forth conversation
because you're gonna understand that sign when you see it.
And then you're gonna be able to use that sign
and sign it correctly.
Now I have an entire free training
that goes over in quite a bit of depth
of exactly why this isn't working for you,
how you can see it show up in your own signing,
and then how to fix it.
Because I'm all about, let's take it, let's fix it.
I don't want to just be like, acknowledge the problem.
Let's acknowledge it and let's fix it.
I actually go into several more mistakes
you may be making in your signing.
So if you're interested in that,
I highly recommend you check out that training below.
It's called how to have back and forth conversations
without your brain and your hands freezing.
'Cause if you ever had a conversation
and you're signing with somebody
and you're like, "This is gonna be so much fun!"
And they sign to you, and you're like, "Holy crap.
I have no idea what they just signed to me."
Then you're definitely gonna want to
attend that free training.
I go all over what it is that you need to do
and how to do it.
Not just what to do, but how to do it
so that you can have a conversation.
So you can make connections and communicate
and use sign language like you want to.
Sorry. I get really excited.
Yep. I'm not gonna apologize.
I just did apologize, but I'm retracting that apology.
I do get excited and you're welcome.
So you're gonna promise me that you're gonna say,
"Receptive is king, receptive is king,
receptive is king," all right?
Now be sure to hit the notification bell.
Definitely check out that free training.
You can go to theASLlaunchformula.com
to learn more about it,
but definitely hit the notification bell
because in the next video, I'm gonna tell you
how to be more accurate in your expressive signing.
So today was about understanding other people.
Then the next video, it's about how to be
a better, more accurate signer,
all right, and why you may be struggling
if you find yourself making mistakes with some signs.
So definitely hit the notification bell
so you don't miss out on that one.
Definitely check out the free training in the link below.
And also, if you want to try out
some receptive vocabulary learning,
check out these two videos right here.