quickest way to learn ASL?

illusive man

New Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2013
Messages
7
Reaction score
0
Hey all,

I'l start out by giving you some background information on my family hearing history. My grandma is deaf, my mom is 50 and needs hearing aids or shes pretty much deaf, and i'm 17 and my hearing has been getting worse and worse. The doctors say they are pretty sure there is something genetic that runs through my mom's side of the family.

Anyways, i can still hear but i very often ask people to repeat what they say, or fail exams of Spanish oral comprehension when a man speaks with a background sound (like if hes in a boat or talking on a radio). I've been to the doctor a while ago who said my hearing was fine but it wasn't even at all in both ears, and it's gotten worse since then. It wasn't clogged ears, i don't listen to music using earbudds, so it's just my stupid ears failing on me.

i've pretty much accepted the fact that i am hard hearing, and will need hearing aids soon. I might go completely deaf in the years to come for all i know.

I've pretty much accepted the fact that i am hard hearing, will soon need hearing aids, at this young of an age (very young for someone who wasn't born deaf). I decided not to get sad over it, because in the end being deaf doesn't really restrict you in every day life, and I think there is a very nice community of deaf people out there. My question is: whats the quickest way to learn ASL? I want to learn it the fastest possible way because I want to get it over with, and figure want to be prepared for something life changing with my hearing.

Thanks

-R
 
Languages are complicated things. Really learning ASL isn't going to be a quick project in any sense. But someone asked about immersion (maybe the fastest way to learn a language?) a while back and I wrote up a list of things I felt that, combined, made a decent attempt at (/substitute for) an immersion-like experience. Link to that list: http://www.alldeaf.com/introduce-yourself/106395-hello-info-needed.html#post2103456

There's at least one thing on the list that won't apply to you because of your young age, but you can probably tweak things as nec.

Good luck!
 
Last edited:
Awesome, thanks a lot for your help! That post was very helpful. I am limited financially :p but I'll figure it out.

Thanks again

-R
 
A whole lot of free stuff is available out there. The only thing I'd really try to find a way to pay for is classes. Don't assume you have to take college classes. Those are massively expensive. I don't know where you live, but here we have a couple options for continuing education courses. I took night classes at a local Deaf school for $60. (That's $60.00 for 8 weeks, 1 night a week for 2 hours a night.) They offered 3 levels. We also have an organization here that serves the Deaf community that offers something similar, and sometimes colleges (especially community colleges) will offer some sort of continuing education at night.

You don't have to learn everything in class. You can teach yourself alot on your own. But it's really easy to teach yourself wrong. So a big purpose of the classes is to catch your mistakes, make sure you're on the right track, have a place to get the kind of feedback you can't get from self-study. And from someone you trust to give you quality answers to your questions.

Other than that, the internet and your local library can be amazing resources for free learning.
 
I'm actually in luck of living near a huge school for deaf children...I'm sure i can find some classes there.

Thanks a lot for your help! I appreciate it. This is kind of new and scary to me in a way.
 
Back
Top