Rating: 
Summary: A Must-Have Book
Review: The publisher promotes this book as a study guide to improve your grade in an ASL course. In fact, it is much more. Even if you do not have access to a formal class in ASL, this book gives an excellent introduction to deaf culture and American Sign Language. The author does a great job of explaining to beginners the grammatical rules of a language whose syntax is just beginning to be understood by linguists. The diagrams of how to form the signs are pretty good -- it's tough for any book to really show the movements unambiguously. One of the last sections includes a complete translation of The Lord's Prayer, interesting both for its religious significance as well as being the longest ASL monologue I have seen in any book. (Dialogues only can show you so much about a language).
Rating: 
Summary: Good With ASL Grammar Structure
Review: This book is very good and ASL and it's structure are the natural language of the deaf. But the lady in an earlier review said to avoid 'Pidgeon Signed English'. First off, it's PIDGIN Signed English (PSE). And hearing people shouldn't AVOID it. Any grammar structure of ASL is good as long as hearing people want to learn our language. PSE is sign language used in the exact structure as spoken English while ASL order goes in it's own order. I'm happy with hearing people learning EITHER structure. But if you want to learn the ASL order, get this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Stay far, far away.
Review: This book was *dreadful*. Several of the assignments refer to signs that aren't shown anywhere in the book; one of the explanations refers to posessive pronouns as "objective" pronouns, which means something completely different; many of the pictures used to illustrate signs are confusing, and there's little attempt to explain them; even the definitions offered aren't always clear. There are plenty of better books about ASL available.
Rating:
Summary: recommended by a deaf friend
Review: This book was recommended to me by a deaf friend. It is a great book for learning things beyond simply how to sign individual words. Eg - it shows you how to phrase questions etc. I however found some of the signs difficult to follow from the pictures and descriptions.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for use with classroom instruction
Review: This is a wonderful resource for teachers of ASL, as well as for any student trying to keep up with or remember information from a class. The cultural and syntactic information in this book is the best I've seen in an introductory book. The only potential drawback is the fact that the author chose not to describe execution of the signs -- there are picture drawings only. I taught a course on ASL using only this book and was very pleased with it as a resource. For you teachers out there, I enocuraged my class to jot down their own notes to help them remember what the picture actually meant your hands were supposed to do. I believe that most of them found this method more helpful than actually having a pre-written description.
Rating:
Summary: Ideal For Self-study or For in the Classroom. Super Book!!
Review: Whether one is study by themselves, or one wishes to use this book as a beginning ASL text for classroom use, Dr. Stewert's book will have you well on your way to learning this beautiful language. As a hearing impaired person, it is important to me to learn sign language as it is used in the deaf community. This book differs from other mass-marketed ASL books in that there are extensive explainations on ASL Grammar, facial expressions, and the culture of the Deaf Community. This book is chock-full useful vocabulary that is clearly illustrated and used in both English-gloss, and in ASL grammar to aid in learning. People often see me practicing my ASL at school or at work and they express a desire "to learn sign language." My response to them is always the same: (1) Buy this book along with Martin LA Sternberg's ASL Dictionary (along with the one on CD ROM if you can), and (2) Stay away from courses and popular "Sign Language" courses and books that use the "pidgeon sign." Why settle for learning this wonderful language the wrong way when you can have the best ASL text on the market? Feel free to email me with more questions. I highly recommend this book, and like I said, I tell everyone I meet who expresses a desire to learn ASL to buy it!
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