by Our second American Sign Language book published in three weeks — Day One: Learning American Sign Language in 24 Hours written by Janna Sweenie and David Boles — is now available for purchase online as an eBook. You may read the book online, on your smartphone, tablet, computer or Kindle! You also get 150 free HD ASL videos for use with the book! We invite you to join us in our ongoing effort to help propagate American Sign Language as a proper foreign language!
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Janna and I have written five American Sign Language books together, and here’s the teaching notion of Day One: Learning American Sign Language in 24 Hours:
The first question any ASL student asks — private study students or public university students — is, “How long is this going to take?” Those students aren’t trying to insult the learning process or set limits on their commitment. We have learned they want to carve out time from an overwhelming day and a busy schedule so they can accomplish their language goals. Unwitting weeks and days of study can be overwhelming to the new student and, in our experience, few self-students are actually able to devote more than one hour a day to language acquisition.
We have decided to take that minimal study requirement and turn it into a purposeful want that will not only make you feel good and accomplished, but also help in setting goals and expectations. Learning ASL in a day — across 24, carefully crafted, hourly, learning sessions — will give you the same sort of learning you would receive in a Level One, 15-week, university American Sign Language course at a major university. …
If you are interested in trying out ASL and tempting something new — then you will find delight and serious intention in these 24 learning sessions. The teaching will be contextually framed in the routine of the day for easier, real life, application beyond the theoretical mind. We will share the expression and understanding of basic needs, help build vocabulary, and create proper grammar and syntax rules in a fun, and perhaps, even translucent way.
The path to mastering ASL is done in fitful spurts of compiled, visual, conceits that quickly build in acquisitional and colloquial use. Many of our students need to learn ASL for their jobs and, as the only “signer” in the workplace, they feel lost and pressured to perform. By learning some basic communicative commands and instructions with us, they begin to help build a fuller language dyad between perceiver and signer and subsequently find more satisfaction in their jobs.
Buy the book and get access to over 150 free teaching videos based on the text!
Here’s a lesson from the book:
I don’t want to brush my teeth! (brush-teeth + don’t-want + fe) 10:01pm
“Brush teeth” is a simple HandShape 1 and you pretend you’re brushing your teeth with that finger. Don’t touch your teeth, though. Just move HandShape 1 back and forth, from the end of the mouth to the other end. You practiced “want” earlier in your sentence from 3:52am. For “don’t want,” you have the same HandShape 5 with claws, palms facing the ceiling. Pretend you have a piece of clothing in your hands. Close your HandShape 5 with claws and turn around the closed hands, palms facing the ground. Quickly change your HandShape to 5 again but soften them up because you just threw your clothing to the floor. “Don’t want” has FacialExpression Awful — as if brushing teeth is such a bad thing!
The rest of the 150 HD teaching videos are available for you to watch — for free! — 24/7/365 from our website!
We thank you for all your support over the years!
We have even more ideas for books that we can’t wait to write and share with you!
This was a fun book to write!
The entry level books are always a keen challenge to make interesting and delightful! You did an excellent job with the videos.
The videos look good. First time we did them in HD. Bigger. Easier to see.
Yes, the videos look stunning. They’re currently streaming in HD @720p and, in the future, we can automatically start streaming them at 1080p. I like that sort of future-proofing. SMILE!
Enough celebration. Now, on to the next book! That will be a big, tough one.
Ha! Fair enough! SMILE! Yes, on to the next book — and I agree it will be a wonderful challenge to get right in tone and scope — and I’m also certain it will be effective in completion and the reading! Onward!
David,
This looks to be a fantastic and important book for those interested in ASL. One question, though — with ASL being such a visually oriented language, why would you not want the cover of an introductory book to be a bit more visually stimulating — perhaps showing one person signing another, or what not.
Our research indicates a larger percentage of sales for book covers with large text. Images tend to look small and confusing in the Kindle bookstore. Our titles — for all our books — also tend to have a lot of words, by necessity, and there’s only so much real estate available.