A Student's Guide to the Deaf Community by Michelle Jay

Title: A Student's Guide to the Deaf Community

Author: Michelle Jay

 Publisher: Judea Media, LLC

Date Published: July 1, 2011

Genre: Non-fiction

Pages: 204 (iBooks)

Age Range: 9+ (anyone can really read this book if they are interested in learning ASL)





Summary


As anyone who has learned a foreign language will tell you, all language is an experience. And that experience is found through a language's culture its people.

The journey toward complete comprehension and usage of American Sign Language includes the recognition, not only of the sovereignty of the language, but of the understanding that ASL lives within its own community and culture.

The full learning and understanding of a language involves much more than vocabulary or sentence structure. All language is unique in vocabulary, grammar, syntax, emotion, and more... including culture. ASL is a language unique to the community that uses it.

Don't Just "Sign"... Communicate! focuses on giving you a better understanding of the ASL community and culture, as well as a better and more comprehensive understanding of learning the language. This guide successfully takes you inside the Deaf community and gets you involved in its fascinating culture.

Take advantage of this informative and handy resource that will make your journey into ASL a fulfilling adventure. Start ASL has created this guide so that you can easily explore the ASL language and Deaf culture. This guide provides you with tools, advice, and helpful resources not available anywhere else!


Review 


This book gives you an excellent insight to the deaf community, and deaf culture. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would suggest it, and the rest of Michelle Jay's ASL learning books, to anyone who is interested in learning ASL (American Sign Language).

It gives you all the information you need to know about the deaf community and culture; giving you websites, books, dictionaries, and even more information. Michelle Jay suggests different ways to learn ASL if you're interested in learning the language, (Online classes, books, movies to watch, and more).

It was a rather quick read. The set up of the book was nice (read it on my iPad), though the lessons are rather long. There are 5 Lessons to read. There is a lot of information you take in, but because it is a fast read, you hardly notice.


Little tip to this book: There are signs that they give you as examples in this book and as I read it, I went through my ASL Dictionary and looked up the words to know how to sign each one before I continued reading.

I am also taking the author's online class: central.start-american-sign-language.com/moodle/