This delightful instructional video is guided by an instructor named Clarissa who is equal parts skilled, knowledgeable, and entertaining. As the title proclaims, this video will teach viewers their ABCs, numbers up to and beyond one hundred, finger spelling, colors, some useful everyday signs, and the basics of grammar for American Sign Language.
While the runtime is fairly short (at about 26 minutes of content between the intro and credits), ASL provides extremely useful information for both new signers and those looking to polish the rust from their old skills. Clarissa provides just enough entertainment and surprise to keep any viewer engaged and learning.
An appearance by a deaf student named Rachel towards the end of the video provides viewers an excellent chance to see a conversation in ASL both with and without spoken word. As a novice signer myself, I was very happy to have the chance to review many lessons I had forgotten and even learn a couple of new words and see actual people use signs I hadn’t seen outside instruction manuals!
As stated above, Clarissa is quite entertaining and energetic, but she also knows when a more serious approach will help the viewer absorb information. Her timing is outstanding and she crams a considerable amount of knowledge into this short video. The production value is very modern, YouTube-ish at times, but always engaging. Having a physical copy of this in language learning collections would be excellent for patrons: repeated viewing and practice of the skills in this video would make for very quick learning of American Sign Language basics.
I think this video’s greatest strength is it assumes the viewer is ready and willing to learn. So many ASL manuals and instruction videos get bogged down in convincing the viewer to use sign language, but ASL - Learn ABCs, Numbers, Fingerspelling, Colors, Grammar Basics & Everyday Useful Signs expertly avoids that pitfall. This outstanding ASL resource is a must-have for library shelves.
What type of library programming could use this title?
ASL - Learn ABCs, Numbers, Fingerspelling, Colors, Grammar Basics & Everyday Useful Signs would be an outstanding addition to library programming introducing or reviewing ASL.
What ages would this video be suitable for?
Though teens and young adults are the most probable target audience for this video, it is suitable for all ages.