Please share our information with your friends and family. If you have any special ASL needs, please let us know. We would be glad to assist you.  You can always email us at info@asldeafined.com .

See you online!

Sincerely,

ASLdeafined Team

The more straightforward ways would be to watch ASL videos online or practice your ASL skills with a friend. For those that would like to try something that involves more risk-taking,  consider attending deaf social events or become a tutor to someone just learning how to sign. This way you not only improve your skills, but have the bonus of interacting with others in the community and making important connections as well.

One of the best and most entertaining ways to improve your signing ability is to try your hand at signing songs. Many of us are surrounded by music in our daily life, perhaps the next time you hear a song you might challenge yourself to sign it on the spot. Please do not try this method while driving though J. Good luck and enjoy finding other new and interesting ways to test your skills.

As much as it was sort of entertaining   and humorous to watch the two “jamming” to the music, I started thinking how they have taken their precious gift of hearing, for granted.  Have they ever thought what life would be like should they lose that gift?  What if the ringing in their ears over the next few years diminished their ability to clearly understand communication?   How would their lives change?

Isn’t the ability to hear a miraculous wonder?  However, many people do things on a daily basis that may damage their hearing.  I know of one man who as a teenager, worked alongside his dad and siblings on what’s called a “buzz rig”, which is a device attached to the back of a tractor and long tree limbs and logs are placed on a moveable table.  When the table is tiled forward, a huge blade cuts the wood into chunks for the fireplace or wood stove.   The loud, “screaming” sounds of the saw blade passing through the log caused so much ear damage that many members of that family lost their hearing before the age of 21.  I know that family well.

Think of the athletics, and casual users, who seem to be abusing their hearing on a daily basis by using ear plugs to amplify the sounds into their ear canals.  Many parents have requested that their child use headphones when they listen to the music at home so the rest of the family doesn’t have to be subjected to the abuse of “Twisted Sister”, but are they aware of the damage that may be taking place?

Last week, I took particular notice at the gym of almost everyone with some sort of listening device shoved into their ear canal.  Because of this, many people with perfectly good hearing are damaging this gift of hearing.  Loud noises are known to damage a person’s ability to hear with 100% accuracy, and as the years pass, there will be more and more individuals who realize a severe decrease in their ability to comprehend what’s being spoken to them.

Young people often have this idea that their hearing is indestructible, but those who have abused their hearing by listening to loud music, or by being subjected to loud noises, will tell you otherwise.

Safeguard YOUR ability to hear!!   There are MANY reasons for a person to be deaf or hard-of-hearing, but subjecting yourself to loud noises does not have to be one of them.   Exploding loud music directly into the eardrum is not only dangerous, but it is downright foolish.

The next time you see somebody at the traffic light with the music blaring; it may not be because he likes to play it loud.   It could be that he has lost his precious gift to hear at the normal volume.   Perhaps you would like to print this article and place it in the door, or on the windshield, of someone you love while there still is time.

While visiting my relatives in Atlanta, Georgia, for Christmas, I decided to take them along for a beautiful tour of Savannah.   It was a spectacular time filled with historical information, good food, and lots of laughter, all contributing to a very memorable Holiday.

As we toured the Historical District of Savannah, I recalled something I had learned as a student of American Sign Language, regarding a woman who was deaf, who not only lived in Savannah, but she was also the Founder of the Girl Scouts of America.   Her name was Juliette Gordon Low.  Not only was she born in Savannah, but her house is still there.  This is also the very spot where the Girl Scouts held their very first meeting.

There’s one very familiar quote of Juliette’s call to her sister:  “Come right over!  I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight.”  This quote appeared in a brochure I picked up at the house during our tour of the city.

I am sure many of you who are former (or current) members of the Girl Scouts can recall seeing the American Sign Language alphabet in your Girl Scouts manual.

To my knowledge, Juliette was born with a severe ear infection which left her deaf in one ear.  Then, when she married, a piece of rice punctured the eardrum of the opposite ear, leaving her completely deaf.  Juliette’s birth place, and her life-long home, continues to be beautifully preserved in Savannah, Georgia, by the Girl Scouts of America.

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Because of this, ASLdeafined offers Gift Certificates year-round, for a variety of special occasions.  Gift certificates may be purchased for any period of time, from One Month to an unlimited number of months.

Simply email us at info@asldeafined.com to order your Gift Certificate today, OR, simply go to our website www.ASLdeafined.com, and click on “Gift Certificate”.  Once your order is completed, we will send you an Invoice through PayPal.  Then, we will e-mail you a Gift Certificate with a User Name and Password attached to it.  All you have to do is print out the Certificate and present it to your friend, or family member.

A sample of the Gift Certificate is attached below.   As you can see, the Gift of Learning makes wonderful Christmas gifts, as well as wonderful gifts for so many other special occasions.

Let us help you to help that Special Person to start learning American Sign Language today.

Please let us know of other features and suggestions you would like to see integrated into ASLdeafined.com.

At ASLdeafined, we created the ability to customize the three groups of subscribers for a reason:

For the deaf student group, we have added more activities designed to help students who are still in public education with improving their English grammar and skills.  In addition, this section helps students to improve their English vocabulary, and ASL structure.

The next group is for hearing parents with deaf children.  With this group, we have added pertinent information that may assist parents with raising their deaf child.

The last group created on ASLdeafined is for the community at-large.  This group was designed for people who work with a deaf person, or for those who simply wish to learn ASL for a variety of reasons.  Basically, if a subscriber does not fit into the first two groups, then this would be the area he/she would want to sign up under.  If you have the interest, or passion, to learn ASL, with the intent of one day becoming an interpreter, for example, this would be the group you would want to subscribe under.

At ASLdeafined, our goal is to provide  relevant information that best matches each of our subscribers.  As always, if you have further questions about our site, please email us.

For those of you who have another brand of the Tablet, you know ASLdeafined is very compatible with it.  Our entire site is based on Adobe Flash technology.  However, we are in the process of preparing our site to be converted over to HTML 5 when that time occurs.

We sure appreciate all of your questions we have been receiving on a daily basis.  Please continue to send us your concerns.

When committing yourself to a task, make that commitment using realistic goals.  Many people will declare their intent to lose 10 pounds a week for the next ten weeks, but after losing just 3 pounds the first month, they give up in failure.  Their expectations were too lofty, too high-in-the-clouds, and just plain too unrealistic.  When learning American Sign Language (ASL), the same example can be used.  Some people are so excited and anxious to learn this new language that they’ll set goals-of-completion so high that they find it impossible to maintain that level of learning.  Within a month or two, their learning will grind to a halt.  I have met so many people who will come up to me and say, “I learned some sign language once, years ago.”  I’ll ask, “Great.  What signs do you know?”  They’ll explain with a twinge of embarrassment that, “Oh, I forgot most of it.”

“The world is filled with good intentions,” is another wonderful expression that doesn’t require any kind of explanation.  However, as it applies to learning ASL, people have had all the good intentions of learning the language, but for one reason or another, just never got around to it.  Many parents of deaf children have pledged themselves to learn ASL, but life just sort of got in the way.  The weeks melted into months; months into years; and, years into far too long of a time to wait.  “It’s never to late to learn,” is another great expression that is appropriate to use here.  Since we can’t re-visit the past and recoup that lost time, there’s no better time than the present, to rededicate ourselves to the task of learning ASL.

When you do make that decision to start learning, set realistic levels of expectation.  You may decide to learn only 10 signs per week, or 40 per month; 520 per year.   Most people could maintain a fairly decent conversation in sign language using those 520 words.  The KEY is to DO IT.  Don’t just say you’re going to learn the language, but DO IT.  Log your 10 words per week.  Practice them.  Maintain this list, and keep it growing to 20, 30, and 40.  You’re on your way.

Learn that it’s natural to want to make an excuse not to learn this week’s lessons.  Don’t allow that attitude to derail your learning.  Keep that list of words with you and practice.  There are so many times during an average day when you can find the time to practice that list of words, such as sitting in traffic, during TV commercials, or while at rest.  It only takes a few minutes, if that is all the time you have to allocate towards learning.  The bottom line is:  Don’t get discouraged because your goals are too high.  If you don’t have the time to learn 100 words a week, then don’t make that your goal.  You can always review your progress, and adjust accordingly, too.  Right?

Good luck.  Dedicate yourself to achieving now, and remember, “a job worth doing, is worth doing well.”