23 topics
American Sign Language help, with ASL grammar taken seriously
ASL is not English on the hands. It has its own word order, it carries a large part of its grammar on the face, and it has no verb to be at all, which is why signing an English sentence word for word produces something a Deaf signer reads as broken. Treating it as a full language with its own rules, rather than as a code for English, is the single change that unsticks most first-year students.
Where students get stuck
I signed every word and they still did not follow me
Almost always this is English word order surviving into ASL. ASL sets the frame first and comments second: time, then topic, then what you want to say about it. I went to the store yesterday comes out as YESTERDAY STORE ME GO. Once the time is established at the front, you do not restate it, because ASL has no past tense ending and the time marker is doing that work for the rest of the passage. Reorder the sentence before you lift your hands and the same vocabulary suddenly lands.
My teacher took marks off for my face, not my hands
Because the face is grammar here, not emotion. A yes or no question is marked by raised eyebrows, a slight head tilt forward and held eye contact. A wh-question is the opposite: brows pulled down and together, head slightly forward. Negation rides on a head shake that runs across the whole phrase being negated, and a topic is flagged with a brow raise before the comment. Signing WHAT TIME with a blank face is like writing a question and leaving off the question mark, so a marker has no choice but to count it wrong.
I can fingerspell fine but I cannot read it back
Everyone hits this, and the fix is to stop trying to catch individual letters. Fluent signers do not spell letter by letter and fluent readers do not read that way. You take in the overall shape and movement of the word as one envelope, usually catching the first letter, the last letter and the rough length, then match it against what the sentence is already about. Practise with closed sets first, like provinces or names in your class, so context does half the work while your eye learns the shapes. Speed comes from recognising words, not from decoding faster.
Classifiers feel like I am just making things up
They are a rule-governed system, not improvisation. A classifier is a handshape that stands in for a noun you have already named, and then moves through space to show where that thing is, how it moves or what shape it has. CL:3 stands for a vehicle, CL:1 for an upright person or thin object, CL:B for a flat surface, CL:5 for a mass or crowd. The order matters: name the noun in full first, then let the classifier take over. If you start with the handshape and never sign CAR, nobody knows what has been parked on the road.
Why do some verbs move in different directions?
These are indicating verbs, and they conjugate through space instead of through endings. Set up your referents first by pointing to spots in the signing area, one to your left, one to your right. Then a verb like ASK, GIVE, HELP or SEND travels from the doer's spot to the receiver's spot, so ME-ASK-YOU and YOU-ASK-ME are the same sign moving in opposite directions. Once a person is placed in space you can keep pointing to that spot for the rest of the conversation without naming them again, which is how ASL handles pronouns.
What's covered
American Sign Language topics you can work through with a tutor, generate practice on, or turn into flashcards and a study plan.
ASL grammar and syntax
- Topic-comment sentence structure
- Time markers and the time line
- Rhetorical questions used as connectors
- Negation across a phrase
- Conditionals and if-then constructions
Non-manual markers
- Brow raise for yes or no questions
- Furrowed brows for wh-questions
- Mouth morphemes: CHA, MM, OO and TH
- Role shift for reporting dialogue
- Eye gaze and use of signing space
Vocabulary and classifiers
- Core vocabulary by theme
- Classifier handshapes CL:1, CL:3, CL:B and CL:5
- Depicting size, shape and location
- Compound and initialised signs
Fingerspelling and numbers
- Producing a clean, readable spell
- Receptive fingerspelling drills
- Lexicalised signs such as #BACK and #JOB
- Numbers, ages, money and telling time
Deaf culture and coursework
- Deaf history and Deaf President Now
- Getting attention and other community norms
- ASL against PSE and Signed Exact English
- Glossing conventions for written assignments
- Interpreting roles and ethics
American Sign Language questions
ASL is visual. What can a voice tutor honestly do for it?
It works on every part of an ASL course that is written or talked about, which is more of the course than people expect: word order, non-manual markers, classifier rules, vocabulary meaning, glossing assignments, Deaf history and culture units, and preparing what you plan to sign in a presentation. What it does not do is watch you sign and mark it. There is no sign recognition here, and production only improves with signers and with the Deaf community.
Can it help with a glossing assignment?
Yes, and gloss is where a lot of marks quietly go missing. You can work through an English sentence out loud and it will talk you through the reordering, which non-manual markers belong above which segment, and where the notation conventions your course uses want brackets or a line. Share your screen or hold the sheet up and it will read your gloss back and point at the parts that are still English in disguise.
Is ASL basically English with signs instead of words?
No. ASL is a distinct language with grammar unrelated to English, and it is not a manual version of it. Signed Exact English is a separate system that does map onto English word for word, and Pidgin Signed English sits between the two, which is where the confusion comes from. Mixing them up in an assignment is a common way to lose marks, so it is worth being able to name which one a clip is using.
Will it write my Deaf culture essay?
It will not produce an essay for you to submit. Bring a draft and it grades against your rubric, so you find out that your Deaf President Now section is description where the criteria asked for analysis. It will also quiz you on the reading and talk through an argument you are still forming, which is the part that makes the essay yours.
Stuck on american sign language right now?
Talk it through out loud, share your screen, and watch it worked out step by step on a whiteboard.
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