Sunday 23 September 2012

Memorizing Bible Verses When Your Child is a Visual Learner: Use Sign Language

by Constance Wun

When I realize that many of my Sparkies are visual learners, I immediately sought to YouTube to learn how to sign John 3:16, the main verse for Sparkies’ entrance booklet, Flight 316.

I find that Ann Vines’ video clip is very clear in presenting John 3:16. Ms. Vine signed slowly, so it is easy to follow. She signed only the main words:



In a different video, the presenter signed each word: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwqQjhxpMoQ&feature=related. I like this video because the presenter explained how to do some of the key words.

Don’t be alarmed if you find that words are signed slightly differently in the videos. For spoken words, we have different accents and may pronounce words slightly differently. The same holds true for sign language. Signs are understood within context. Slight variation of the signs for the same word is not uncommon.

The next natural question to follow is: how does one sign the basic Biblical words? Here are some helpful resources:
  1. Valley Bible Church in California has video clips on frequently-used Biblical words. There are text descriptions to explain the flow and steps of a sign. Video quality is not too high but you should find most of what you need: http://www.valleybible.net/DeafMinistry/ASL_Dictionary/asl_dictionary.php
  2. Handspeak.com provides an ASL visual dictionary: http://www.handspeak.com/word/. The dictionary words are nicely organized. The quality of the video is good; however, each slip can be very short, thus make learning a little hard. You may need to manually slide the progress bar to play in slow motion in order to clearly observe the flow of the sign.
  3. The videos in aslpro.com play at a speed that is easy to follow. The dictionary words are still reasonably organized and the quality of the video is good. They have a section on religious words which makes their site very useful in our context: http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi.
Try to use signs with your visual learners!

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