Fingerspelling.

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Coffee Crazy

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In ASL 1 we are learning about making fingerspelling quickier. Our teach tells us to do this flick so that we can get to the next letter faster. She aslo says that in our head we should think what we are going to say. In this case my mind going faster than my fingers and I get behind. Do you guys have any other suggestion on how to improve the speed of finger spelling?

Thank you! :)
 
Practice, Practice Practice! and more Practice!!! lol. When I started learning ASL i fingerspelt everything! street signs, names of stores, now to help me memorize my students names I fingerspell them to myself! Now I am superfast (well not deaf speed, but fast enough lol)
 
i try to describe what i am talking about rather than finger spell. but then again i amstill learning, is that right??
 
personally, when i first learned fingerspelling.. I started out by singing the ABC song on one hand... then it got to the point i could do it with both hands... and my interpreter in high school got scared cuz i would switch hands without realizing it LOL. but practice makes perfect.. and the more you do it, the faster you will be
you can do the abc song, or as one poster said.. fingerspell everything.. take a walk in a neighborhood and you'll be fingerspelling like crazy.
 
BearBeauty said:
personally, when i first learned fingerspelling.. I started out by singing the ABC song on one hand... then it got to the point i could do it with both hands... and my interpreter in high school got scared cuz i would switch hands without realizing it LOL. but practice makes perfect.. and the more you do it, the faster you will be
you can do the abc song, or as one poster said.. fingerspell everything.. take a walk in a neighborhood and you'll be fingerspelling like crazy.
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Well, in this day and age of the hands-free cell phone, I guess fingerspelling to yourself wouldn't make ya look like a 'tard, talking to yourself! Lol, J/K...
 
I rarely do it now.. but I have had to fingerspell to my boyfriend sometimes cuz he knows the manual alphbet so I fingerspell stuff to him if he doesn't understand me.. MEN!! Yeah, he's learning to sign..
 
My ASL teacher suggested, during commericals, to fingerspell as much as you can from what they say/what you see. I've done it, it's hard at first, but it does pick up the pace, seeing as each commerical is half a minute to a minute long!!!

-Krista
 
Believe it or not, the fingerspelling is the most hard to practice wholewide of the American Sign Language, especially reading the fingerspelling.

I found it VERY frustrating when I tried to fingerspelling to my hearing parents, they never get it, EVEN my mom was a interpreter, I have to re-fingerspelling about 3 to 5 times till they finally understand it.

Fingerspelling is just like you are reading the complicated Chinese characters scripts.
 
I agree, it is hard to read sometimes. Some peoples hands can't go into a certian shape. When I fingerspelled my name to the ASL camp I was volunteering for, one of the other Volunteers was writing down my name. He wrote "K-R-Y-S-T-A" I asked him where the Y came from, he asked me to repeat my fingerspelt name and when I did, I noticed my thumb sticks out a bit.
Annoying slightly, but when you notice that you're doing something wrong, or that your hand isn't going to the right shape, you're aware of it from then on.

-Krista
 
Well, my ASL 2 teacher suggested to me that whenever I see words I should fingerspell them. I normally fingerspell words that are 4 or more letters long, maybe 3 letters. I've gotten faster :D
 
Maybe I have some weird, unheard-of disease, but I love fingerspelling and do it all the time! I've always been a good speller, and I love the way the handshapes just flow together sometimes, like in the word "numbers."
 
Ah, yes...

I think the best tip is probably to just practice as much as you can, and maybe start out with shorter words just to practice the transitions between letters. To me, and I'm probably pretty typical, reading fingerspelling is much more difficult, and I'm still struggling with it.
 
I am sitting here like a dork fingerspelling posts, lol. but you can fingerspell :
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog over and over since every letter of the alphabet appears at least once in the sentence. I was doing that at the park today while my DD was playing. I tried to think about it phonetically instead individual letters. Instead I formed individual letters to speel out the entire sentence.
 
Think of common letter combinations then flow those combinations together. Sh, ch, th, nk, ng, etc. Double letters as well, because many double letters are not fully released and then reformed.

Our ASL program actually had a specific course for fingerspelling ("Dactology"). It was very good and helped many of us move from fingerspelling like we were single finger typist to fingerspelling more fluidly.
 
Ive noticed that after fingerspelling a whole page out of my pediatrics book I'm starting fingerspell words like you your and the alot easier to the point that I *almost* dont have to think about them. There are times though I feel like I am fingerspelling to fast and end up skipping over a few letters so I go back and fingerspell the word again making sure I'm forming all the letters in the word.

And a question - whats the most common way to spell double letters? Do you give a slight bounce to the formed letter or do you move to the side a bit, or do you reform the letter? Just curious to see whats actually in use versus what the online tutors say.
 
nightcrickets said:
my hand hurts just thinking about it. (I think I possibly have carpal tunnel)
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I had 7 CTS.. caparal tunnel sydrome...surgeries due to typing on tty or computers... it was no fun...also worked at one company as inventory.. i used machine that i had to type SKU numbers and how many is left in stores...all day long.. It required speed.....i quit...because CTS kept returning...After each surgery it was hard for me to fingerspell for while...
 
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