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.

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

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".