Why Students Should Learn American Sign Language
[Music]
[Applause]
hello
my name is b r e e
s e i am learning sign language
i love it i want to keep learning
to become fluent in sign language
i decided to try and learn sign language
to better understand the people that use
asl
or american sign language as their main
way of communication
now not every person who is deaf is
going to use sign language
but according to michelle westfall a
professor of deaf studies
most people who are born deaf or been
deaf for most of their life
choose to speak sign language over other
forms of communication
because asl is not a class that is
taught in most schools like say
spanish or french i turned to the
internet to help me out
fortunately i discovered that thousands
of youtube videos
online classes tutors and even online
translations
to help me learn asl so i found some
highly reviewed youtube videos of simple
signing for beginners and started my
journey learning asl
i had no idea what i was getting myself
into and i quickly realized that sign
language is just as complex
and detailed as any other language that
doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun for me to
learn
i enjoyed sitting down on my computer
watching the same video 10 times
and practicing the same 15 signs over
and over again
i did this so that eventually i could
look away from the screen and sign the
words as the video was saying them
but as i was learning simple words and
phrases from these videos
i realized that if i ever wanted to be
able to talk with people in sign
language
who actually communicated with asl i
would need more than just little things
like
hello my name is and good morning
i want to one day be able to go out in
public and if i see a person signing
maybe i could talk with them and carry a
conversation in sign language
i felt stuck though because to be honest
i got scared that i didn’t have time for
this extra hobby
between school sports friends and family
the last thing i wanted was to have more
work
more hobbies more things to do i would
try to squeeze in time for learning new
signs but
it got to where even as i was trying to
learn something new i had already
forgotten the old signs from four days
ago
i would never be able to really learn
sign language if i didn’t have the time
to devote to it
i even started thinking to myself well
i’m not hearing impaired
so i don’t need sign language and i
doubted if i wanted to keep going
at this point i had to remember why i
wanted to learn asl in the first place
i thought back to when my aunt who was a
retired director for the north carolina
school for the deaf
told me about children who couldn’t make
friends very easily in their public
school because
they didn’t have a way to talk with the
other students so what happens when you
have a child who is born hard of hearing
or even completely deaf
what happens when your child doesn’t
want to leave the house because they
can’t talk with anyone in their classes
their teachers or people at the
playground what if that was you
what if you grew up feeling isolated and
alone just because you didn’t
communicate the same as the people
around you
i decided to keep pushing on because i
knew that i wanted to be able to reach
out
and share a conversation with people who
use asl so
what if more than just a few people here
and there started to learn sign language
that would mean that 466 million people
across the world
would have a much larger pool of people
to communicate with
and even just starting small will make a
large impact and as more dominoes fall
a child with deafness might not have to
be scared to go to school because
people will be able to sign to them and
understand them
one step that’s already been taken
towards this goal is through hearing
aids and cochlear implants
these implants are small electronic
devices that help a person
to be able to perceive sounds the
cochlear implant has one piece that sits
behind the ear
and a second piece that is surgically
placed in the ear
while this is a great advancement there
are still ways we can improve in this
area too
not every implant is successful and not
every person is able to learn english
easily if they’ve known sign language or
red lips for their whole lives
and in some situations people don’t
always think that they should get a
cochlear implant because
it can often be seen as going against
the deaf culture
but if we are able to promote asl more
through formal classes in school
people who are deaf may not have to
worry about getting hearing aids or
cochlear implants
because personally i want to continue to
learn sign language
and having a class to take at school
that actually counts towards my future
would make it very easy with
determination and hope we can help the
world become more accessible for deaf
people
thank you