hands-on(line) ASL Learning journey

Last week, after I finished memorizing the alphabet in ASL, I downloaded a new app to try out. That comes out to 3 downloaded ASL learning apps on my phone - which I'm finding super useful for working on my learning journey wherever I am. However, this week I really wanted to try something different that forced me to sit down and focus solely on what I am learning. That's why I chose to use Youtube videos this week.

I browsed through a couple but wanted to keep it pretty simple and useful at the same time, since I felt a little busy this week but still wanted to give these videos a real shot. The resource I found that I liked best so far is a Youtube channel called "Learn How to Sign". A lot of the things I like about this channel are similar to what I liked about ASL Bloom, like for example, the fact that it's not solely about memorization of signs but also includes some background information about the language.

Another thing I liked about these videos is that the people in the videos do the signs multiple times at different paces and shot from different angles so that you can really practice getting the signs right.

The creator that I watched in the videos also made it really easy to remember signs by giving little tidbits to help remember how they look or why they are signed the way they are. For example, "no" is actually a mixture of the signs for n & o!

The video linked below is the one I started with from this channel which helped me gain a lot of confidence in learning more signs. They have a ton of videos with different signs as well as tips and tricks to help you start having conversations outside of the house.

I went back the other day to read my plan from my first blog post to remind myself of the plan I had started with. As I was reading it, I realized that I have strayed off the course slightly and was feeling kind of bad about it at first. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that this is the first time I've gone further than learning the alphabet and the first time I've had fun learning ASL and felt like I could potentially start using it in the future. So I've also been learning through this process to give myself some grace, have fun with it, and keep learning even if it is not necessarily going exactly as I planned!