Blog Summary 10: ASL and Grammar

Since our student, Casey Shepard, did not publish his blog summary that was due today, Wed. 11th, here's the one from the other section. Responses are due on Friday, Feb. 13th, by class time.
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People who communicate through the use of American Sign Language face many of the same dilemmas in learning SWE (Standard Written English) that other ESL students face.

ASL is considered to be a foreign language, just like Japanese, Spanish, or French. ASL “speakers” follow a much different set of guidelines in their language than English speakers. For example, when they are communicating they only use the major words in the sentence – leaving out the articles English speakers are accustomed to. For example, instead of saying “I sit in the chair”, the ASL “speaker” might say “I sit chair”.This is not the only difference in the two languages.

Those you communicate through the use of ASL construct sentences different from what would normally be expected in SWE. When asking somebody a question the ASL “speaker” will typically put the question part of the sentence (such as who, what, when, or where) at the end of the sentence much the way SWE uses a question mark. When stating that something happened in the past ASL “speakers” do not simply change the tense of the verb; they place the word finish before the action. For example:

SWE: I wrote this blog post.ASL: I finish write this blog post.
When citing a specific time, ASL “speakers” place the time at the beginning. To take the last example a step further:

SWE: I wrote this blog post last night.ASL: Last night I finish write this blog post.
To take it a step further, ASL requires that the “speaker” perform movements to help the “listener” understand the message. These movements include head movements, holding signs longer, or even raising/lowering their eye brows.

It is nice to know this information but unless it is applied it is only information. It is important to know this because ASL ‘speakers” are required to write in SWE when they write. This means that they are required to take their own words and translate those words into a different language (SWE) every time they must write. To best help the ASL “speaking” student a teacher must understand the dilemmas faced by the student as well as what kind of errors to expect and how to help them fix those mistakes and become better writers.

By: Eric Yearian