Fingerspelling

trish_e87

trish_e87

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I am a hearing person learning sign language. I do great with signs but fingerspelling I am not so great at. I myself can fingerspell but it's hard for me to read someone who is fingerspelling not very fast. I was wondering if anyone had tips on ways i can do better. I am nervous about signing to deaf for that reason. I am afraid they are going to get impatient with me. I have to really think about it when they are long words. :(
If they go somewhat slow i can understand. But I really want to get better.
Please help
 
trish_e87 said:
I am a hearing person learning sign language. I do great with signs but fingerspelling I am not so great at. I myself can fingerspell but it's hard for me to read someone who is fingerspelling not very fast. I was wondering if anyone had tips on ways i can do better. I am nervous about signing to deaf for that reason. I am afraid they are going to get impatient with me. I have to really think about it when they are long words. :(
If they go somewhat slow i can understand. But I really want to get better.
Please help
Click to expand...

Hey I have this same priblem and made a thread similar to this one just a couple days ago. What they told me was practice practice practice.
 
it would be a lot easier if I knew other people who can do it.
The ones that do wont practice and don't really care much.
I am very interested so it gets me really annoyed.
I think my fiance is taking sign language next quator so maybe then I will get better.
 
go to ASLPro.com Home and go to quizess, there is fingerspelling practice. You can pick the speed that you would like, slow, medium or fast.

If you get to fast and find it is slow go to asl.ms there is no www. infront, they have four speeds; slow, medium, fast and deaf (my deaf friends fingerspell faster)

You mentioned about being afraid to talk to deaf people because you dont understand the fingerspelling, if you ask them to slow down, they will!
 
People are happy to repeat themselves, usually - even the native signers need repeats now and then, after all. What helped me was when I stopped reading letter-by-letter and sort of sounding it out in my head as it went along. Now, there are even some letter combinations that I parse as one sign.

The other thing I noticed you mentioned was that you practice expressing a lot, but don't have many opportunities to receive. That's not uncommon, but the better you get at producing finger spelling, the easier it will be to receive it, too. (I sometimes finger spell when I'm in class or talking to people - not really finger spelling, even, as I don't move my fingers much, but I'll tense the muscles that would make the shapes I want - I hope that makes sense. Almost a visualization technique. It's not the same, but it does help build up the muscle memory that you're aiming for.)
 
When spelling, think of the syllables of the word your'e spelling, rather than the slower, by- each- letter method.....
 
Wow, I never knew about that website. I finally found a sign for word I have been searching for years now.

They are right, most of time, you can get better by practice.
 
A few things that I do, that I've found helpful:

1) When reading a novel, newspaper, textbook... fingerspell everything that you're reading. It might be slow-going at first, and tiring... but you'd be surprised how quickly your accuracy, speed and stamina increase!

2) When signing "from my head", I envision myself writing the word on paper, the way I normally would. I've found that this keeps me from thinking of every single letter, which slows me down if I actually THINK about it too much.

Receptive fingerspelling takes more time, if you're not around folks that do it much. So, I think you're on the right track, looking for folks with whom you can practice. I'm not sure if it's the same at the school where you're taking your ASL classes... but at mine, there's actually a class called "Fingerspelling and Number Use" (in which I'm currently enrolled), and it's helping me a LOT. There's a lot of emphasis on receptive fingerspelling, which I really needed.
 
InTheGenes said:
A few things that I do, that I've found helpful:

1) When reading a novel, newspaper, textbook... fingerspell everything that you're reading. It might be slow-going at first, and tiring... but you'd be surprised how quickly your accuracy, speed and stamina increase!

2) When signing "from my head", I envision myself writing the word on paper, the way I normally would. I've found that this keeps me from thinking of every single letter, which slows me down if I actually THINK about it too much.

Receptive fingerspelling takes more time, if you're not around folks that do it much. So, I think you're on the right track, looking for folks with whom you can practice. I'm not sure if it's the same at the school where you're taking your ASL classes... but at mine, there's actually a class called "Fingerspelling and Number Use" (in which I'm currently enrolled), and it's helping me a LOT. There's a lot of emphasis on receptive fingerspelling, which I really needed.
Click to expand...


Agreed. I was told to think in groups of 3 or 4 letters, rather than individual letters. Makes it flow much easier and appear less jerky and hesitant.
 
:D
thanks everyone for the advice!

I am getting it a little better :)
I do think about the letters too much.
I overthink everything though :p
Well i will keep practicing.
My fiance is taking sign language this coming quater so i hope he likes it.
We can talk to each other and that will help me a lot.
I am very excited for this years family reunion!
There is a guy who is deaf that my aunt takes care of and I want to talk to him.
My aunt(whom I don't ever see until reunions) and granny takes care of probably 3 people who are deaf.
I always wanted to talk to them :)
Now I can!!!!
I am all into signing!
I don't even need all the classes, just one for my major but I want to take them all anyways just to learn more signs.
 
Tousi said:
When spelling, think of the syllables of the word your'e spelling, rather than the slower, by- each- letter method.....
Click to expand...
That's OK for expressive spelling but it doesn't always work on the receptive end. The reason is, if the person spelling to you isn't spelling in syllables or meaningful "chunks" then you can't read it that way.

It also helps if the person spelling to you actually spells the word close to correctly. :D
 
We used to practice common letter combinations that almost flow as one, such as:

ing
ed
st
er
the
pr
pl
ph
ous
cient
per
ant
ent
fl
or
ie
ei
sc
sp
sk
dh
gh
br
ough


Like practicing typing (oops, I mean "keyboarding"). You don't "think" each letter when you type.

Your signing partner needs to use these combinations too, for you to see them in action.
 
:giggle:

yeah i don't see how people can spell so good sometimes.
I mess up sometimes and spell things wrong :P
 
I cannot handle the spellfinger. I'm very bad pay attention. It make my head dizzy.
 
Simple, tell them to fingerspell slower.

I am not good with reading fingerspelling as well. Sometimes, I can catch up. Sometimes, I can't.
 
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