how to transition from contact signing to asl

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igimaster

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I was taught often with initialized versions of signs or versions used with PSE. I started reading a book on ASL and realized many of the signs were done different especially to make use of directional verbs. I have looked at different dictionaries that agree with the Joy of signing the book I learned from. My problem is I can't figure out how to make those signs directional and the ASL book I'm working from is not as well written in describing the signs as Joy of Signing.

Does anybody have advice for moving from PSE to ASL?
 
Ohhh I wish you the best on this one. I learned sign from books and online, so I understand your frustration. My advice is practice and immersion: go to Deaf club events, watch ASL movies, sign with those fluent with ASL, or go online. A great resource is ASL University, Google it because I don't remember the exact URL. Good luck!
 
I would suggest that you can get a person to teach you sign the right way so that you won't say to yourself like "oops, I make the mistake of signing the wrong way." It is a lot easier to learn from the person than from the book as it can make confusing sign that you want to sign right. Dramasteph had good suggestions about Deaf clubs, ASL movies, or better yet go to the sign language class. Good luck on learning the ASL. :wave:
 
Going from PSE to ASL is a syntactical and coneptual issue. You really only learned to use another mode of English when you learned PSE. So to switch to ASL is like learning all over again, because ASL is not a manual mode of English, but a completely separate langauge.
 
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