The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Sign Language

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Excellent stories and examples of Deaf Culture info

Rating:
Summary: Not a particularly good resource
Review: I have read other "complete idiots guides" and they can be good resources for beginners. However, this one falls short. It's unclear, easily misinterpreted and inaccurate in places. It gives an slightly less than OK assessment of deaf culture and does not even begin to give the reader an understanding of ASL.

Rating:
Summary: Only good for the small bits on Deaf Culture.
Review: The illustrations are poorly drawn, and often don't even match the descriptions (when it says to use an "s" shape, it shows an "a" shaped hand).

Page 185 shows the sign for "Day" over the word and description for "Second" and "Second" where "Day" should be. On page 202 the illustration for "white" (Which doesn't look like the sign "White" at all even if it was in the right place) is over both the words "white" and "brown".

Some of the alphabet is wrong. The sign for "P" for example, has the tip of the thumb touching the tip of the middle finger (similar to what you would see in the sign for "tea"). It is ironic considering a few of the author's short rants on the mistakes of others (her husband signing "hamburger" instead of "wife", once, or a common mistake between the signs "work" and, well, as the author puts it "making out"), and using words like "clumsiness" to describe their signing. If they were meant to be jokes, they were poorly written. They came off as put downs.

This book be discouraging to a new signer, who needs the confidence to go out there and use what he's learned, not to feel the need to constantly apologize for not being fluent. It's intimidating enough as it is.











Rating:
Summary: Complete Idiot, indeed
Review: Well, the book's not all bad . . . For example, the attempt to describe Deaf culture is successful on a very basic level, and the illustrations are attractive, if not particularly useful. That, however, is the main problem- the uselessness of the illustrations. It's as if a textbook on French wrote "gkhukyf" instead of "bonjour"! There's also relatively little on grammar, other than an acknowledgement that there is such a thing as ASL grammar (which is a good first step but by no means the last. Try A Basic Course in American Sign Language by Humphries, Padden, and O'Rourke. And definitely practice with native signers!