Learning ASL: Lesson 04 - Reflection

I started this lesson originally on May 22nd and continued the lesson over the course of two different days. After finishing the lesson today, I reflected on my goals at the beginning of this project and realized how behind I was on my lessons (at least in comparison to where I wanted to be). My original goal for myself was to complete one video lesson a day and considering when I started this project (May 15th), I hoped to have completed 19 video lessons by now. My schedule and lack of motivation at the conclusion of the academic year has inhibited my discipline for this project. With my existing progress I believe I will pivot the format of my final presentation to be more of an overall reflection. More details to follow…

Anyway, my fourth ASL Lesson was about 36-minutes in video length. After each review of vocabulary words, I tried to pause the video and imitate the motion of Instructor Bill. With each pause with Instructor Bill and Katelyn, my total time in this lesson was 49:32 (I tried to minimize my pausing again). With my longer hiatus between lessons I was surprised with how many terms I retained. I believe my deep interest for the language has allowed me to be engaged during each lesson (even with long hiatuses) so that I am still able to proficiently absorb information. Many words in ASL are also very literal in movement which allow attainable comprehension of words. 


In this lesson, I learned the words: angry, aunt, baby, bed, bedroom, brush-teeth, cry, daughter, do not want, excuse / forgive, lay-off / pardon, feel, friend, happy, help, hurt, if, idea, love, room / box, sad, son, sorry / regret, stop, suppose, uncle, wash, rofl. A couple of the listed terms had variations of movement in correspondence to their context. Pain / hurt for example, have different variations to show pain in a certain location which can contrast pain in context of feelings. 


In each lesson, there is a relatively focused theme. This lesson put an emphasis on feelings and family, the last lesson had a large focus on family and locations, and the first lesson had a focus on questioning words. The general focus of each lesson has allowed me to easily associate words with other words learned. This format has strengthened my memory overall of terms in ASL. 


Despite my recent pause in activity for this project, I have enjoyed the learning experience and growing my understanding of ASL. Also, my friend Nadia recently shared with me potential new resources to learn ASL that I think I will try out tomorrow! I will report back with updates on my learning! 

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Project Introduction

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