Language/American-sign-language/Tips/My-Experience
How is Sign Language useful?
Disclaimer: In this article I will be using my own personal experiences.
During my first two years of High School, I took American Sign Language as my second language. I was able to learn the language at a faster pace than my friends because I studied a lot on my own time. When using Sign Language to communicate, there are no words being actively thought when performing at a higher level. The only thing that is presented is meaning. When signing the word "Mountain", you display the meaning just like any other language would do. Except, there is no active voice. This is why Sign Language is different from all spoken languages.
After finishing my second year, I was going to start my third year as a college class. Unfortunately, I moved to a different school that did not offer Sign Language classes. I still continued to study sign language and interact with the Deaf community. But, I started to make different friends which influenced me to learn another language. German was not my first choice for a third language, but I didn't have the resources to learn the other languages. My first week of learning German was hard. I tried applying it to my daily life, I used spiral index cards, and I had to move again... away from my friends that I just made. I didn't want to give up learning the language. I did not know how to enhance my learning until I remembered that I knew Sign Language. I took a different approach to learning a language and it worked. Every time I said the word "Frau" (meaning woman), I would sign the word in ASL. I was giving a voice to my non-voice language. This is what I needed to break through the learning barrier that I had. Within in 4 weeks of learning German, my vocabulary expanded to a great amount. After a week of studying grammar and learning the cases, I was able to write in German as well as speak it. Learning Sign Language is simple and fun. I highly recommend anyone to learn it. Applying my second language to my third is what let me excel.