Learning American Sign Language

One of the main differences that sign language presents to an audience is the mode in which the language makes itself perceived. Bochner et al. (2011), noted that the only true difference that sign language has opposing an oral language is the fact that the signed languages transmit ideas and linguistic concepts through the visual channel of the brain as opposed to the more commonly used auditory channel of the brain. There is an assumption that people do not use sign language in the same manner that oral languages are used and that the signers of the language do not learn the language in the same fashion and patterns in which an oral language is learned. In fact, both signed and oral languages share quite a few features with each other that …show more content…
The results of this test were quite interesting as it showed that the rate in which deaf children learned sign language was very comparable to the rate that their peers learning oral languages were mastering their language, showing that ASL learning patterns mimic the majority of spoken language learning patterns—namely English in this study (Anderson & Reilly, 1992). However, interestingly enough, there were a few differences that were found that set the children learning sign language apart from their …show more content…
The acquisition of sign language as either an L1 or an L2 is fascinating in terms of how the process is completed. There are also some very interesting aspects of the acquisition of a sign language that appear to be unique to signing that does not occur when learning a spoken