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.