ODYSSEY REVIEW
Gallaudet University Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center

Ready! Set! Sign!!!
The Most Comprehensive of Digital Sign Teaching

Publisher: Ready! Set! Sign!!!
LLC, P.O. Box 6676, Arlington, VA 22206-6676;
Fax: (703) 820-0022
www.readysetsign.com
Topics: sign language
Ages: 10-100
Cost: $99.95
Requirements: Windows

By Rosemary Stifter

Rosemary Stifter is an academic applications specialist with Kendall Demonstration Elementary School at the Gallaudet University Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center, in Washington, D.C.

There are a number of sign language software programs on the market today but Ready! Set! Sign!! is the most comprehensive one I have seen for beginning signers. Ready! Set! Sign!! is a 24-lesson sign language course, which teaches sign vocabulary, visual grammar, fingerspelling, and how to sign numbers, and provides information about deafness. The software package includes five CD-ROMs, using video clips, photos, animations and graphics to teach over 1,200 signs. 

Content and Instruction
Each lesson is filled with a great deal of information but neatly divided into smaller pieces that are easy to digest. These include instruction, vocabulary, practice, wrap-up and cultural moment.  Each lesson begins with an instruction component, which serves as an introduction to the lesson, reviewing what you have learned and what you will learn.  The sign vocabulary is taught in the next component by showing a visual aid—a video, graphic or animation—followed by the related sign and explanation tying the two together.  You continue to practice the sign vocabulary by viewing sentences using the newly learned vocabulary. The wrap-up includes a few new signs that relate to the lesson topic and at the end of each lesson you can view a “cultural moment” video segment about deafness, deaf people and deaf culture so that you can understand the people with whom you will be communicating.  Most of the lessons teach new vocabulary organized by common learning characteristics including part-whole relationships and function and use. There are also several lessons devoted to teaching grammar concepts such as directionality and classifiers. You can view the instructional content in any order that is best for you, though the lessons are designed to build on the signs and grammar concepts learned in previous lessons.

When I asked my husband, a novice signer, to use Ready! Set! Sign!! my intentions were twofold.  I wanted to get a non-signer’s point of view for this review, and I hoped he would learn some new signs to use with my deaf parents in the process.  He started with the first lesson, “100 Signs You Already Know,” and was surprised at how many signs he knew already.  I realized that the creators of Ready! Set! Sign!!! used a very successful strategy, that early success in a program keeps you coming back for more. After completing that first lesson, my husband quickly became motivated and felt the confidence to continue to the next lesson.

 “Using Facial Expressions” is the title of the second lesson, which teaches that facial expressions also communicate information in sign language.  My husband enjoyed practicing with various facial expressions depicted by the male and female hosts of the course.  He thought it odd that he wasn’t able to read the women’s facial expressions as well as the man’s.  Being from Venus, that was no surprise to me!

The third lesson, like lesson two, does not introduce any new signs but teaches how to adjust the signs to the situation and introducing new signers to space and placement of signs.  For example, how you sign “push” depends on what you are pushing, whether it be a cart, a person or a button.

Lesson four, “Signs Showing Part of a Thing” introduces 54 new signs that have part-whole relationships. The main instructional strategy used to teach new sign vocabulary meets the needs of various learning styles.  For example, the sign vocabulary for “policeman/policewoman” begins with a short video of a woman dressed as a police officer rubbing her badge.  It is followed by an explanation of how every police officer wears a badge and how the sign is made with a “c” hand shape on the left side of the chest. Then the model demonstrates how to produce that sign. With the help of the visual aids and explanations, my husband found this approach very helpful in relating the sign to something he knows, which in turn helped him to remember. Though he considered the visual aids to be a bit drawn out and corny, the concrete visualization of the sign facilitated his learning and remembering the sign. 

Once my husband learned the sign vocabulary, he continued to practice the sentences.  This is basically a time to practice his receptive skills of the vocabulary learned so far in the course.  In the practice component you view a video of two to three signed sentences and you can receive immediate feedback by clicking the “CC” button to turn on the closed captions.  This is a nice feature but often he would just move onto the next practice sentence and not turn on the closed captions to check if his interpretation was correct. Or if he did not know one sign then he would turn on the captions before the signed sentence was complete.  This practice technique places a lot of responsibility on the learner to measure their own progress and achievement, more appropriate for adults than young learners.

The weakest area of the program is the assessment piece.  There are no games or tests to accurately measure what has been learned.  The only way to monitor the learner’s progress is documentation of the date and number of minutes that one worked in individual lessons, accessed in the User Options. There is no way to keep track of what signs were learned in that lesson.

Ease of Use
If you are like me and don’t read manuals before using a software program it will take a few minutes figuring out the controls.  No instructions are given on the screen as to what to do after the video is played.  After trial and error of clicking on several buttons, I understood how to navigate the program and it is very easy to use. You can access the main menu at any time and select a new lesson or return to the lesson table of contents to select a particular part of a lesson very easily.  You can open a glossary of all the +1250 signs from any place in the instruction for re-learning and a sign list is also always available for printing though you cannot use this feature for navigating within the lesson.  If you exit the program before finishing a lesson, the next time you log in you will be taken to the component where you left off. It does not take you to the exact sign or sentence you were working on. Anyone can use the closed captions at any time to make the spoken language accessible.  The instructions in the User’s Guide are clearly written and are provided on-screen as well as in a printed version. The installation procedure is simple to accomplish.

Screen Appearance
The layout of this program is aesthetically pleasing with the appropriate use of text and colors, crisp videos, clear sound, graphics and animation.  When you click the play button the visual aid plays and a screen shot of the video moves to another window.  I would have preferred the visual aid to be played in its own window so there is a smoother transition between it and the sign and explanation.  It is nice to have a static graphic when the sign is being explained to add extra support for remembering the sign. The menu buttons at the bottom of the screen make for easy navigation and the glossary has a nice search capability to find signs quickly and easily.  In the glossary you can view videos of the sign only, a sign and explanation and/or the visual aid. I like this layout because users have a choice as to how they learn or review a sign.  If this program was developed for young learners, it would be nice to search the signs by pictures or categories.

Works Well
The techniques and strategies used in Ready! Set! Sign!!! are quite successful but creating a perfect sign language course on CD-ROM is a difficult task for any software developer. It is more effective than using a book or dictionary but a high level of interactivity is almost impossible to achieve without having a native deaf signer sitting with you.  Ready! Set! Sign!!! picks up where other sign language dictionaries left off by teaching sign language in a logical manner and including conversational techniques.  It also accommodates multiple learning styles that you don’t often see in educational software. Ready! Set! Sign!!! is advertised for ages 10-100, but it does not mention that this program was designed with hearing learners in mind.  All of the explanations and information are given verbally with closed captions and would be a great resource for hearing parents, grandparents, and caretakers who want to learn sign language.  It would also work well with any oral deaf adults or late-deafened adults wishing to learn sign language. I would not recommend this for young deaf children who may not be able to keep up with the captions and the level of content presented.

A Sure Hit
Winner of the BESSIE, ComputED’s Best Educational Software Award and a Media & Methods Awards Portfolio Winner, Ready! Set! Sign!!! is sure to be a hit with sign language learners young and old.  Ready! Set! Sign!!! sells for $99.95 and is available from the company’s online store.  Visit the Ready! Set! Sign!!! Web site at http://www.readysetsign.com.