As the New Year springs us forward into perpetuity, Janna and I are delighted to share the news with you that we have finally taken the advice of our Hardcore ASL students and instructors who have wanted to have all seven levels — all the teaching — in a single reference book. Introducing, from Boles Books Writing and Publishing — Hardcore ASL Textbook for Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 — available right now from Kindle Direct Publishing:
Here’s a little taste of American Sign Language HandShapes from the book:
HANDSHAPES:
The HandShapes — how you form your hand to help create the sign — varies in each section, and you will see how they change and expand as you progress through the learning. HandShapes are a critical part of ASL. You can’t say, “we am walking” with HandShape V or 5. You must use HandShape 1. Be sure to memorize all the HandShapes linked to your syllabus. A lot of times Hearing students don’t pay attention — or focus enough — in creating their HandShapes and often the “signs” don’t mean anything or they mean something else. However, there are times when you will see a specific sign for a word can have more than one HandShape and that is perfectly acceptable and confusing. We will help you know the difference between what works and what doesn’t.
If you choose to follow our Hardcore ASL system as written, you’ll spend three weeks per level and finish our program in 21 weeks. All that learning equals 3.5 years of semester-by-semester study at a traditional university! That said, you may also move at your own pace and learn in your own time.
We have been actively teaching ASL online at HardcoreASL.com for many years. Our students always wanted to have a way to take their learning with them.
We seriously considered using iBooks and iAuthor from Apple to publish our textbook, but we were concerned with censorship and the future viability of a closed system.
There isn’t much proprietary about Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing that makes getting your book ready for sale a hard nut to crack. I created a Google Doc with all seven Hardcore ASL levels, saved it as a .PDF, and then uploaded it to Amazon.
The whole process, from upload to being available online for sale took five hours: One minute to upload the book and 4:59 for the textbook to propagate across the Amazon servers.
The one great thing Amazon has done is open up the Kindle Book reading experience to any and all devices. You can read a Kindle book on your computer, smartphone or tablet without any trouble at all.
That ease of portability of your library is the genius of Kindle Direct Publishing.
Janna and I hope you enjoy our Hardcore ASL Textbook for Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 — writing the book has been a lifelong labor of loving — just beware the textbook is text only. There are no embedded images or video. American Sign Language is a visual means of communication, and the videos for the textbook are a separate purchase on the HardcoreASL.com website and you can also choose to study on your own, or with us.
The learning decision is all yours and the textbook alone spans over 250 standard typewritten pages and well over 90,000 words!