Lesson #8
For my last week of Sign Lessons, I decided to do a quiz of all the words I had learned thus far. I learned 105 words and the alphabet. I had my husband quiz me every day with these words and by the end of the week, I could recall nearly 90% of them!
I did realize one fatal flaw. When I was reviewing my words, I would Sign them in the exact same order. If I do them in order, I know the Signs. If my husband mixes up the order, I can't remember as many. I had been memorizing the patterns of the Signs more than the Signs themselves! So this week I've been trying to fix this. I've had my husband always test me randomly in a different order every time.
Looking back at my previous posts, especially the first one, I feel like I came a long way. First of all, I learned that Sign Language is just like any other language and can be difficult to learn. It takes dedication and time. Secondly, I envisioned this assignment to be like a one hill roller coaster. I expected to struggle with the learning for the first bit and then suddenly get the swing of things and it would all be down hill and smooth sailing. I was quite wrong. I was on a several hill roller coaster with a few loops and zig zags in between. I had days and a few weeks where learning was easy and I was understanding everything and connecting the dots, and then the next day or week, I felt like I was starting all over again. I learned, and appreciated knowing, that I use different types of ways to help me learn. Sometimes different learning techniques worked one week and then the next, I had to try something different. Though I had some hard, frustrating times (which comes from any learning experience), I had some really good, fun, and rewarding times! I learned that, for myself, I really learn best using the ZPD. I learn better by interacting with others and by learning from them. I really enjoyed recognizing how I was learning. I feel like I've been able to broaden my understanding of how I learn and how those around me learn.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Lesson #7
My motivation for learning this week hit a low as I have been busy with work and with finals approaching. I tried to do motivate myself tactically saying that I could reward myself by getting some ice cream at the end of the week but that only made me think of ice cream more and then I just had to go get some ice cream right then and there. Sigh. As such, I started my lesson learning how to Sign clothes and ended up skipping a few chapters in the book to learn how to Sign food related things...specifically ice cream
I'm sure you all want to know how to Sign for ice cream now. : ) It is pretty self explanatory. Here is a YouTube video of how to Sign the yummy dessert.
Some topics of Signs are easier to learn than others. For example, last weeks Signs of emotions was pretty easy for me to catch on and some food (like Ice Cream) is self explanatory. Other Signs, such as pronouns and some verbs are more difficult to learn.
I find that I have a lot of "Ah-Ha!" moments while learning how to Sign. For example, the Sign for "bacon" is done by having your two fingers pressed together, your palms down, and then pulling your fingers apart in a "wiggly" line. Pretty easy right? Being able to see the wiggly line in the book reminded me of a piece of bacon (see image below), but if I had just seen someone Sign the word (without knowing what it was), I probably would have thought that it was a necktie or a ribbon.
With this weeks reading being about transferring knowledge, I immediately started to think of how I see an image in my mind of whatever I am Signing before I Sign. I mentioned before how Signs can correlate with each other to create one Sign (example: The Sign for "Cop" is made by Signing the letter "C" on your chest). I have previous knowledge in my mind of what a Cop is, what a Cop does and in particular, that a Cop wears a badge on his/her uniform. It helps me remember that the "C" Sign will need to go on my shoulder to complete the Sign for "Cop".
My motivation for learning this week hit a low as I have been busy with work and with finals approaching. I tried to do motivate myself tactically saying that I could reward myself by getting some ice cream at the end of the week but that only made me think of ice cream more and then I just had to go get some ice cream right then and there. Sigh. As such, I started my lesson learning how to Sign clothes and ended up skipping a few chapters in the book to learn how to Sign food related things...specifically ice cream
| Jacket | Breakfast | Cheese |
| Hat | Lunch | Ice Cream |
| Gloves | Dinner | Bacon |
| Gown | Restaurant | Water |
| Pants | Milk | Cream |
| Coat | Meat | Fry |
I'm sure you all want to know how to Sign for ice cream now. : ) It is pretty self explanatory. Here is a YouTube video of how to Sign the yummy dessert.
Some topics of Signs are easier to learn than others. For example, last weeks Signs of emotions was pretty easy for me to catch on and some food (like Ice Cream) is self explanatory. Other Signs, such as pronouns and some verbs are more difficult to learn.
I find that I have a lot of "Ah-Ha!" moments while learning how to Sign. For example, the Sign for "bacon" is done by having your two fingers pressed together, your palms down, and then pulling your fingers apart in a "wiggly" line. Pretty easy right? Being able to see the wiggly line in the book reminded me of a piece of bacon (see image below), but if I had just seen someone Sign the word (without knowing what it was), I probably would have thought that it was a necktie or a ribbon.
With this weeks reading being about transferring knowledge, I immediately started to think of how I see an image in my mind of whatever I am Signing before I Sign. I mentioned before how Signs can correlate with each other to create one Sign (example: The Sign for "Cop" is made by Signing the letter "C" on your chest). I have previous knowledge in my mind of what a Cop is, what a Cop does and in particular, that a Cop wears a badge on his/her uniform. It helps me remember that the "C" Sign will need to go on my shoulder to complete the Sign for "Cop".
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Lesson #6
This week I learned more Emotion Signs (there are so many!) and a few others:
Courage
Conscience, Guilty
Envy
Jealous
Stingy
Selfish
Vanity
Pride, Proud, Arrogant
Wish
Satisfy
Comfortable, Comfort
Complain
People
Individual
Friend
Audience
Character, Role
Neighbor
Sweetheart
Police, Cop, Security
Thief, Robber (one of my favorites)
I found this week that I was able to more easily learn more Signs than I have in the past. A lot of Signs use pieces of other Signs to complete the meaning. For example, the Sign for "cop" is made by placing your right hand shaped in the "C" letter on the left shoulder. Knowing the alphabet already, this Sign was easy to remember. Once again, I found that ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) was coming into play with my learning. Through collaboration with my husband and my sister-in-law (occasionally), I am making far more progress than I could on my own.
The image on the left is the Sign for "C" and the image on the right is the Sign for "Cop".
In reading Brown et al and the reading for last week, I am 100% in agreement that I cannot learn Sign Language without actively using what I am learning. I think that right now I am mostly acquiring the "tools" or Signs but I'm not fully actively using them because I have not yet come across someone in my social circle that speaks fluently in Sign Language. I'm not saying that I'm not learning any Signs because I am actively practicing with my husband but I think that my knowledge and acquiring of Signs would be more embedded in my mind if I received lessons from someone who is completely fluent.
This week I learned more Emotion Signs (there are so many!) and a few others:
Courage
Conscience, Guilty
Envy
Jealous
Stingy
Selfish
Vanity
Pride, Proud, Arrogant
Wish
Satisfy
Comfortable, Comfort
Complain
People
Individual
Friend
Audience
Character, Role
Neighbor
Sweetheart
Police, Cop, Security
Thief, Robber (one of my favorites)
I found this week that I was able to more easily learn more Signs than I have in the past. A lot of Signs use pieces of other Signs to complete the meaning. For example, the Sign for "cop" is made by placing your right hand shaped in the "C" letter on the left shoulder. Knowing the alphabet already, this Sign was easy to remember. Once again, I found that ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) was coming into play with my learning. Through collaboration with my husband and my sister-in-law (occasionally), I am making far more progress than I could on my own.
The image on the left is the Sign for "C" and the image on the right is the Sign for "Cop".
In reading Brown et al and the reading for last week, I am 100% in agreement that I cannot learn Sign Language without actively using what I am learning. I think that right now I am mostly acquiring the "tools" or Signs but I'm not fully actively using them because I have not yet come across someone in my social circle that speaks fluently in Sign Language. I'm not saying that I'm not learning any Signs because I am actively practicing with my husband but I think that my knowledge and acquiring of Signs would be more embedded in my mind if I received lessons from someone who is completely fluent.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Lesson #5
This week I learned the following Signs:
Days of the week (Sun-Sat)
Hate, Detest, Despise
Happy, Glad, Rejoice, Joy
Sad, Dejected, Downcast
Laugh
Smile, Cheerful, Friendly
Sorry, Regret, Apologize
Cry, Weep, Tears
Cross, Grouchy
Anger, Wrath
A little background on how I have been studying/learning-
The first thing I do when I sit down to learn is I review everything I have learned over the past few weeks twice. My husband tells me a word that I have learned and then I Sign it to him. After the little review, I learn to Sign the new words for the week. I do this by Signing a few from the book or from YouTube and then walking away for a second.
This is always how I've been able to learn languages (I "learned" Spanish in High School and really struggled with it). I found that if I just memorized a few thing, (for instance, a few Signs) and then went about my daily schedule (work, cleaning, cooking) and Signed those few words in my head or did them randomly throughout the day, I would remember them better than if I just sat in a chair and did it over and over again. For some reason, it just works for me.
I add a few more Signs each day following this same process and then at the end of the week, I review all the Signs I have learned thus far.
One thing that really helped me this week was having my sister-in-law come over and having her participate in my Sign learning experience. Having me teach her, really made me pay more attention to what I was doing. I was more self aware of how I positioning my fingers and wanted to do them exactly right so that my sister-in-law would see the correct position. I was learning indirectly from her-it was great!
What really stuck out to me this week for our reading assignment was the following quote, "Learning is not merely situated in practice-as if it were some independently reifiable process that just happened to be located somewhere; learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world." (Situated Learning, 35). Though I learn better by studying Sign Language with my husband, I feel like if I had more interactions with people who knew Sign Language, I would be able to learn it better.
This week I learned the following Signs:
Days of the week (Sun-Sat)
Hate, Detest, Despise
Happy, Glad, Rejoice, Joy
Sad, Dejected, Downcast
Laugh
Smile, Cheerful, Friendly
Sorry, Regret, Apologize
Cry, Weep, Tears
Cross, Grouchy
Anger, Wrath
A little background on how I have been studying/learning-
The first thing I do when I sit down to learn is I review everything I have learned over the past few weeks twice. My husband tells me a word that I have learned and then I Sign it to him. After the little review, I learn to Sign the new words for the week. I do this by Signing a few from the book or from YouTube and then walking away for a second.
This is always how I've been able to learn languages (I "learned" Spanish in High School and really struggled with it). I found that if I just memorized a few thing, (for instance, a few Signs) and then went about my daily schedule (work, cleaning, cooking) and Signed those few words in my head or did them randomly throughout the day, I would remember them better than if I just sat in a chair and did it over and over again. For some reason, it just works for me.
I add a few more Signs each day following this same process and then at the end of the week, I review all the Signs I have learned thus far.
One thing that really helped me this week was having my sister-in-law come over and having her participate in my Sign learning experience. Having me teach her, really made me pay more attention to what I was doing. I was more self aware of how I positioning my fingers and wanted to do them exactly right so that my sister-in-law would see the correct position. I was learning indirectly from her-it was great!
What really stuck out to me this week for our reading assignment was the following quote, "Learning is not merely situated in practice-as if it were some independently reifiable process that just happened to be located somewhere; learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world." (Situated Learning, 35). Though I learn better by studying Sign Language with my husband, I feel like if I had more interactions with people who knew Sign Language, I would be able to learn it better.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Lesson #4
This week, I learned how to Sign the the days of the week as well as other time references such as:
Today
Day
Now, currently
Morning
Noon
Afternoon
Night
Tomorrow
Yesterday
Hour
Minute, second
I'm finding myself experiencing and recognizing the two processes of "learning" and "remembering". It's difficult for me to recall information from long-term memory back into working memory (remembering) and vice versa.
It has been frustrating trying to recall the Signs I have tried to learn over the past few weeks and seeing that I have forgotten several of them even though I try to practice them often. ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) model is definitely playing a factor here as my husband knows several of these basic Signs and is assisting and encouraging me. He only needs to give me small hints to help me remember a Sign. It really helps to have someone to practice with and it helps to actually see the Signs done by another person as opposed to only reading the book and looking at pictures.
Below are images of the sign "Morning" (first image) and "Night" (second image).
It's easy to see the relationship between the Signs and what they represent. For instance, the Sign for "Morning" reminded me of rising a sun. The Sign for "Night" reminded me of covering up something. After reading the chapters for this week, I really started to think about the ways that I am a novice in this learning experience. I am learning from experts (I assume since they wrote the books I am using as resources), but I do not yet have the extensive amount of knowledge on this topic as an expert does. However, though I will not become an expert at the end of these 8 weeks of learning, if I continue to learn how to Sign (which I believe I will), I hope to enhance my short-term memory by chunking information like an expert does.
This week, I learned how to Sign the the days of the week as well as other time references such as:
Today
Day
Now, currently
Morning
Noon
Afternoon
Night
Tomorrow
Yesterday
Hour
Minute, second
I'm finding myself experiencing and recognizing the two processes of "learning" and "remembering". It's difficult for me to recall information from long-term memory back into working memory (remembering) and vice versa.
It has been frustrating trying to recall the Signs I have tried to learn over the past few weeks and seeing that I have forgotten several of them even though I try to practice them often. ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) model is definitely playing a factor here as my husband knows several of these basic Signs and is assisting and encouraging me. He only needs to give me small hints to help me remember a Sign. It really helps to have someone to practice with and it helps to actually see the Signs done by another person as opposed to only reading the book and looking at pictures.
Below are images of the sign "Morning" (first image) and "Night" (second image).
It's easy to see the relationship between the Signs and what they represent. For instance, the Sign for "Morning" reminded me of rising a sun. The Sign for "Night" reminded me of covering up something. After reading the chapters for this week, I really started to think about the ways that I am a novice in this learning experience. I am learning from experts (I assume since they wrote the books I am using as resources), but I do not yet have the extensive amount of knowledge on this topic as an expert does. However, though I will not become an expert at the end of these 8 weeks of learning, if I continue to learn how to Sign (which I believe I will), I hope to enhance my short-term memory by chunking information like an expert does.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Lesson #3
In addition to reviewing the alphabet and the words I learned last week, I am leaning Pronouns. This week I have learned the following:
In addition to reviewing the alphabet and the words I learned last week, I am leaning Pronouns. This week I have learned the following:
| They,Them, Those, These | We, Us | Anyone, Anybody | Where |
| This | You | I | Which |
| Him, He, She, Her | Our | Me | How |
| My, Mine | Your, Your own | One Another | What |
| Someone, Somebody | Self, Myself | That | Why |
| Everybody, Everyone | Ourselves | Who | When |
It's impossible for me to become an expert and to know how to Sign fluently in 8 weeks so I've been pulling the most basic Signs from my resources to learn. I find that as I had a preplanned schema in my mind on how I would learn, I am definitely re-writing in order to accommodate how I learn each week. For example, the first week I assumed I could find loads of videos online that could teach me how to learn this language and indeed there are several videos, but they offer what I was looking for as far as basics. On the second week, I found some great books at the library and since then, I have re-written my schema to follow the way the book is written.
I mentioned last week that my husband, Jeffrey, was helping me learn how to Sign. He has learned a few Signs as he works with Special Olympic athletes, but is not fluent. Having someone learn along side with me not only encourages me, but it motivates me to want to learn and remember the Signs so that I don't fall behind. Like Vygotsky's theory, I learn better in this situation with social interaction.
Here's a YouTube video I found online that shows how to Sign Who, What, When, Where and How. These were my favorite Signs I learned this week.
I mentioned last week that my husband, Jeffrey, was helping me learn how to Sign. He has learned a few Signs as he works with Special Olympic athletes, but is not fluent. Having someone learn along side with me not only encourages me, but it motivates me to want to learn and remember the Signs so that I don't fall behind. Like Vygotsky's theory, I learn better in this situation with social interaction.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Lesson #2
This week I turned to the handy dandy library and have learned the signs for the following words:
Male
Female
Man
Woman
Father
Mother
Grandfather
Grandmother
Boy
Girl
Brother
Sister
Wife
Husband
Family
I got the following books at the library:
"The Joy of Signing" by Lottie L. Riekehof.
"Signing Exact English" by Gerilee Gustason and Esther Zawolkow
"Signing Around Town: Sign Language for Kids" by Kathryn Clay
Also, I found this awesome YouTube clip that talks about Sign Language. From this clip, I learned that Sign Language does not follow the syntax and grammar of English. It also talked about how Sign Language is a visual language. I always knew this but I didn't realize how important it is to emphasis your facial expressions. Check out the short clip here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTs8Vf9pldI
This weeks challenge was remembering the right sign for "Man" and "Boy" (which are somewhat similar) and "Woman" and "Girl".
For example, the sign for "Man" is done by holding your hand up to your forehead like you are tipping the brim of an invisible hat on your head, then dropping your hand down and opening your hand like you are shaking someone's hand. The sign for "Boy" is done the same way only instead of opening your hand like you are shaking someone's hand, you bring your hand down as though measuring the height of a child. Here is the demonstration in the book "The Joy of Signing":
Hmmm...oddly enough, now that I have written down the actions for "Man" and "Boy", they don't seem too hard (haha!).
I had made a goal to learn certain things (I made a list on my first blog post) but when looking through the books I got at the library, it really helped me to see how the books compile their lessons so I think I will follow their guidelines. I get frustrated every now and then when I mess up a sign but I find myself being really intrinsically motivated. I really want to learn this and be able to use this in my life. My husband is helping me learn and is practicing the alphabet and these signs that I learned this week. Having someone learn with me has really made my experience this week turn into a flow. I forget sometimes how much I love to learn new things and I am excited to continue this experience!
This week I turned to the handy dandy library and have learned the signs for the following words:
Male
Female
Man
Woman
Father
Mother
Grandfather
Grandmother
Boy
Girl
Brother
Sister
Wife
Husband
Family
I got the following books at the library:
"The Joy of Signing" by Lottie L. Riekehof.
"Signing Exact English" by Gerilee Gustason and Esther Zawolkow
"Signing Around Town: Sign Language for Kids" by Kathryn Clay
Also, I found this awesome YouTube clip that talks about Sign Language. From this clip, I learned that Sign Language does not follow the syntax and grammar of English. It also talked about how Sign Language is a visual language. I always knew this but I didn't realize how important it is to emphasis your facial expressions. Check out the short clip here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTs8Vf9pldI
This weeks challenge was remembering the right sign for "Man" and "Boy" (which are somewhat similar) and "Woman" and "Girl".
For example, the sign for "Man" is done by holding your hand up to your forehead like you are tipping the brim of an invisible hat on your head, then dropping your hand down and opening your hand like you are shaking someone's hand. The sign for "Boy" is done the same way only instead of opening your hand like you are shaking someone's hand, you bring your hand down as though measuring the height of a child. Here is the demonstration in the book "The Joy of Signing":
Hmmm...oddly enough, now that I have written down the actions for "Man" and "Boy", they don't seem too hard (haha!).
I had made a goal to learn certain things (I made a list on my first blog post) but when looking through the books I got at the library, it really helped me to see how the books compile their lessons so I think I will follow their guidelines. I get frustrated every now and then when I mess up a sign but I find myself being really intrinsically motivated. I really want to learn this and be able to use this in my life. My husband is helping me learn and is practicing the alphabet and these signs that I learned this week. Having someone learn with me has really made my experience this week turn into a flow. I forget sometimes how much I love to learn new things and I am excited to continue this experience!
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