Dylon Harrison
Associate Editor
Throughout the world, sign languages are used by Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to give them access to a visual language. This allows them to effectively communicate without the use of spoken language.
These sign languages have become an invaluable tool for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who use them. However, hearing people can benefit from learning sign language as well.
The most obvious benefit would be making communication easier between the hearing and Deaf members of a community. If everyone could sign, there would be no need for Deaf individuals to write everything down, or try to lip-read everything being said to them.
This would help to make day-to-day life more easily accessible for more members of our society.
Learning how to sign can also help you to meet and mingle with members of the local signing community. This gives you opportunities to make new friends and network with a larger number of people that you might not be able to otherwise.
Beyond this, hearing people could also benefit from being able to use Sign Language to communicate with other hearing people.
Picture this: you’re at a party and need to tell your friend something, but with the music and other people talking, it’s too loud for your friend to hear you. If you both knew how to sign, this problem would be easy to overcome.
Sign Language also makes it possible to communicate across a room without yelling, or to communicate with someone through a window.
Benefits to Sign Language can also be found in other, less commonly thought of situations.
For example, this summer I took a scuba diving class. When you’re underwater, you obviously can’t talk to the people you’re with. Because of this, communication between the instructor, my classmates and myself was limited to a handful of basic hand signals.
These hand signals were fine for communicating the few specific things we needed to know while diving. However, if everyone involved had known how to sign, we would have been able to have full, detailed conversations underwater, exactly the same as if we were on dry land.
I also, coincidentally, had a Deaf supervisor at my summer job. As the only other signer on that team, my supervisor was able to communicate with me much easier than with my coworkers, making it possible for me to finish my work quicker and more effectively.
There is no real reason to not learn Sign Language.
Multiple studies have shown that young children learning Sign Language does not have any negative effect on their spoken language skills. In fact, learning to sign can actually help to develop language skills faster.
There are also many opportunities to learn Sign Language throughout most communities.
Non-profits will occasionally host events in which the community can come learn how to sign. If you can’t find one of these events, there are also many resources available online dedicated to teaching Sign Language.
I have been signing for a couple of years now and still use an English to American Sign Language app whenever I’m unsure of how to sign certain words.
For ISU students, learning to sign is not only easily accessible, but also something they can get credits for. ASL I and ASL II partially satisfy Objective Four of ISU’s general education requirements.
On the Pocatello campus, a student can take up to four semesters of American Sign Language. This would give them two years of experience with a second language, and have them well on their way to fluency.
