This week I have been insanely busy as I am moving this weekend (yay, but packing takes so much time). Since I haven't had as much time to use my apps each day like I have been doing the past couple weeks, I decided to sit down and try a new resource on YouTube. I was watching TikTok earlier in the day and found quite a few people recommend Bill Vicars on YouTube, as he is deaf himself and teaches lessons online through his channel. The video I watched was "Learn Sign Language: Lesson 1".
At first I was a bit thrown off as there were no sounds on the video, whereas in the videos that I have watched in the past have had sounds, whether that be just soft music or people discussing what they are doing. Once I got more into the video, I noticed that I was actually more engaged with the video and had to pay more attention to what they were doing as I was learning since there was no sound telling me what was going on. This was definitely intentional on their part when making the video, and probably to replicate more closely how deaf people learn sign language, as opposed to hearing people learning it.
There's a few things that I really liked about learning from the video.
The no sound aspect. As I mentioned before, I think it was really beneficial to have no sound because it forces you to pay closer attention to the hand motions and what's happening on the screen.
Going back over previous signs. Throughout the video, you learn multiple different signs. What I have found tricky with learning sign language is learning new signs and then getting old ones mixed up with new ones. With this video, he goes through multiple new signs and then circles back to the previous ones throughout the whole thing, so that you are constantly rethinking about what you had previously learned.
Showing different forms of signs. I knew there were different signs in different languages (ex. ASL - American Sign Language vs BSL - British Sign Language), but I didn't really know that there were different versions within ASL itself. In this video, he goes through some words that have alternate signs and shows them both which is really helpful. He even does this with his name!
Showing not only just hand movements. As I was looking on TikTok for inspiration I saw a few videos that explained that a big part of ASL is facial expressions while doing the hand motions. I like that in this video, he explains those facial expressions and which words they go with.
Overall I really liked the layout of this video and would recommend it for anyone wanting to learn ASL. Is there any ASL resources that others have found to recommend?
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