Spotlight Review by Irene Buntyn
©2003 Home Life, Inc. Originally published in Practical Homeschooling March/April 2003. Used by permission.
Ages 10 and up. Windows 95 and up.
Ready! Set! Sign!! LLC, P.O. Box 6676, Arlington, VA 22206-6676, (703) 820-5730, www.readysetsign.com
Many families are interested in learning sign language but have had difficulty finding a complete course at an affordable price. Enter Ready! Set! Sign!! (RSS), an all-inclusive course that teaches American Sign Language (ASL), equivalent Signed English vocabulary and grammar, and deaf culture. RSS allows your student to learn more than isolated signs; he will be able to use them in the appropriate ASL syntax.
The most significant difference between ASL and Signed English is that ASL doesn’t necessarily follow English word order, having its own form of logical word order (syntax), whereas Signed English follows regular English word order. In any case, with this program, you get both for the price of one!
Consisting of five CD-ROMs with 24 lessons . . . 13 hours of video instruction . . . 1,250 ASL signs . . . and 3,000 English words, RSS is the most comprehensive course I have ever seen! Dr. Daniel Burch, past President of The Registry of Interpreters of the Deaf, and Sharon O’Brien, an experienced signer, provide the instruction while Mary Lou Novitsky, a deaf celebrity, presents the practice sentences. All three instructors graduated from Gallaudet University, the only university for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. Imagine these lively instructors coming to your home and involving you in the lesson by explaining various facets of Deaf culture, sign-to-meaning relationships, and facial expressions.
Start with lesson 1, where the instructors will demonstrate how many signs you may already know. During normal conversation, many of us may use the signs for write, telephone, and time without even realizing that many are real ASL signs, so from the very beginning you have 100 signs in your repertoire. Talk about a confidence builder!
The program thoroughly explains how in ASL words are correlated with facial and body expressions. For example, the word “walk” can be signed at various speeds, using various body expressions to communicate walking briskly, leisurely, or sluggishly. Since this is one of the core components of using ASL correctly, it is impressive to see it covered so comprehensively in the program.
Ready! Set! Sign!! also teaches fingerspelling and numbers but just as importantly, RSS provides the student with significant practice in reading finger-spelled words, an often neglected skill.
All lessons have the same format; a small, high-quality video pops up showing two people in a typical ASL conversation or performing a task that the student can associate with the new vocabulary. For example, you may see Sharon O’Brien putting a cake in the oven. Next, Dr. Burch will teach you how to sign the word “bake.” He will explain that the sign for “bake” looks a lot like the task of putting something in the oven, giving you a visual aid to remember the sign. Additionally, he correlates the word with its origins and reminds the student to, “Think Visually,” making the sign much easier to recall in subsequent lessons.
Each vocabulary lesson contains seven core parts:
• Instruction
• Vocabulary
• Practice
• More vocabulary
• More practice
• Wrap up
• Cultural moments
The grammar lessons follow the same general strategy of instruction followed by practice, but of course the instruction in those lessons focuses on grammar, rather than vocabulary.
The practice component provides more than just review of past signs. The program provides practice in reading over 1,750 signed sentences, phrases, words, and numbers! It is here that your student will become engaged in “voicing” ASL. “Voicing” means that the student will say whatever he sees the deaf person signing. This is extremely important since it allows the child to read ASL sentences and translate them into appropriate English syntax.
The Cultural Moments section is a definite high point of the instruction because it acquaints you with many facets of Deaf culture, such as reasons for hearing loss, assistive devices for the deaf, and an introduction to the Americans With Disabilities Act.
If you are interested in locating a particular sign, the sign search component will allow you to find it in a snap.
Since the program was designed to bring a student up through the Intermediate level of sign language, if you complete the entire RSS program you can claim up to two years of high school foreign language credit.
Ready! Set! Sign!! is a thorough program that will fulfill your family’s need to learn a second language and put them on the fast track to signing success.
