The American Sign Language Phrase Book

Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource; the best way to learn ASL from a book
Review: This is an excellent resource for those who wish to use real-life ASL as spoken by the American Deaf Community. Unlike other books on the topic, The American Sign Language Phrase Book avoids "Signed English" (the use of ASL as a word-for-word analog to spoken English). The book presents the grammar of ASL, showing sentence structure, phrasing, even slang, and noting when spoken English words are inappropriate. This is the only book I've seen that could really facilitate a friendly conversation between a hearing and deaf person. The down side? The illustrations are hard to get used to. Because The American Sign Language Phrase Book (properly) emphasizes facial expression, there is often not enough detail given in illustrating the hands. My ASL teacher recommends this book to the exclusion of any other ASL dictionary

Rating:
Summary: An excelent series of examples of clear ASL grammer!
Review: This is the text I recommend as a print reinforcement for the signs I teach. The tendency with Sign books, even if they claim to be ASL format, is, if they are set up in alphabetical-order, like a dictionary, then the hearing signer wants to string the signs togther in order of their more familiar spoken English gramma. No one would ask their French teacher to teach them French in English grammar order! Why don't we give Deaf culture and Sign use the same respect!?Lou Fant does!Sign (ASL) should be learned from native users, Deaf! Sign Language books should be used to remind and refresh. Otherwise, we, those Deaf teachers, have to "unteach" signs done trying to use two left hands, or pointing in a wrong direction (often totally changing the concept)!Also, corresponding with this book, is a video. All of the drawings in the book are of Lou Fant. The video is all Lou Fant. It is dry. Ok, sleep inducing! The only variation is a different shirt or sweater donned at the begining of a new chapter. Even consistancy deserves a little variety. :-)