In my last presentation on my second language acquisition journey, I talked about what my experience was like interpersonally, mostly talking about how I enjoyed getting to talk to Alisha and how I loved my teacher, which made the class easier, and how I was totally out of my depth at the barbecue. Now, I'll try to analyze a little further what exactly my teacher did.

My first year taking sign language, we focused a lot on understanding the syntax and remembering the vocabulary. On a typical day, we would sit down, and open our books, and our teacher would give us a brief lesson on the syntax and teach us new vocabulary words and how they fit into the syntax. We worked straight out of a textbook, sometimes watching videos of the scripted dialogues in our textbook. Then, we would follow the scripts and sign to each other using the presentation for reference. If our signs were backwards or lopsided, she would correct us from her chair in front of everyone. For homework, we studied the culture and history, practiced finger spelling and finger reading with online video tools, and translated text from our spoken-English syntax into ASL syntax or vice versa. We would have tests on the vocab every month and there would be culture/history portions to the quiz as well as syntax translation. For the final project, we wrote book reports on famous deaf people in history and then had to sign a 15min presentation on the paper. We also got to go to a barbecue event within the deaf community at the end of the class.

I think this method is an example of total physical response because we did a lot of analysis and a lot of structure, we did have a lot of dialogue, modeled for us, following a script, then later in the year, signing a presentation. Also, we had an immersion piece with the barbecue that added a communicative element. We began just copying our book and video and teacher and then we moved to formulating our own presentations and finally we went to do a conversational piece. Analysis was more important than message. We used the teacher as a dictionary and grammar text, and she would correct us constantly if we were off. But, the class was interesting and fun, which it wouldn't seem from the description, and I really appreciated having such a concrete understanding of the language's function, history, and culture before trying to blather nonsense to get a point across. As a child, I refused to speak until I could utter complete sentences, and I still carry an aversion to babbling without having a concrete and practiced understanding enough to communicate well, not just spew words until something makes sense.

The portion where I tried to talk to Alisha during lunch, conversing with a native speaker who was patient with my fumbling, was very informal but nonetheless Direct-Method-esque as the learning was done only in the target language with total immersion. This I found to be a very valuable experience as I had to communicate my own thoughts in only the target language and had a patient tutor to help me along.

I had mentioned dealing with some severe bullying in the classroom, and I think that may have made learning difficult for the reason that Krashen mentioned in his Affective Filter Hypothesis which states that when a student is stressed or anxious, the harder it is to learn. I definitely encountered that, and due to my harassers being in the same room, I took less risks and my language acquisition suffered for it. The less attention I drew to myself, the better, I thought. No need to give them something else to harass me about. If I hadn't had Alisha, in whose company I found that safe space, I think my language acquisition would have been severely limited.

In my later online studies a year later, I mentioned in my last presentation that I was unable to interact with the online teacher due to scheduling difficulties, so my learning was entirely text based, a very classical approach, studying syntax and vocabulary exclusively without opportunity to interact. I kept up practicing in a mirror, watching video dictionaries of different signs, and practicing my finger spelling and finger reading outside of the online class, but I really struggled not having anyone to talk to.

In terms of progress, I went from fumbling through the finger spelling alphabet to signing enough to be understood, as long as no one asked for a terribly detailed response or used unnecessarily large words so my BICS have gotten better but are still fairly limited. My CALP, or academic language proficiency, is significantly better than my conversational skills because of the way I was taught. I still struggle with conjunctions and prepositions, mostly because there aren't words for those, just a body angle change that is difficult for me to remember which is which conjunction, or where in the sentence the prepositional phrase belongs because it's not always terribly clear.

I have retained most of my understanding of ASL. I still practice finger spelling, reading fingers, and building my vocab whenever I have time. I keep practicing. I try to keep signing for conversation and during worship singing. I'm a word-smart person, so worship for me is more powerful when I'm working with words and meanings. Taking care of my teacher's granddaughters who have hearing disabilities also encourages me to continue. Overall, I've enjoyed my experience and look forward to learning more of the language so I can help nonhearing people as I go into teaching and missions and through the rest of my life.