Basic Course in American Sign Language

If you want to learn true ASL, this is the book for you. It is not signed. English. ASL is a language of its own. Know that before you begin.

This is a really informative book on sign language I bought this to replace a book that was stolen when I took an ASL class in high school. It's by far one of the best books on ASL you can find. Lots and lots of pictures of the different signs with notations throughout.

We bought this for our highschooler who is taking college course. It is working well and she currently has an A the text is easy enough for her to understand.

This is a decent book if you want to learn proper ASL with all the nitty gritty. I don't know if it is the BEST book out there to do so, but I will tell you why it is for sure one of the good ones. Just to get the negatives out of the way: there are some issues with the illustrations in terms of clarity-- they can be a bit confusing sometimes with the more complicated signs. Luckily we are in the age of internet, so you can always double check that stuff. I'm not 100% sure that some of these signs are still valid--I worry about the 1994 publication date (since ASL evolves from time to time, but has variations between regions) These are the only reasons I didn't give it five stars-- I would otherwise. Nothing beats learning from another person, or watching videos, unfortunately. But, this suffices very, very well for alone practice. So, I would say, use this as a jumping off point and hold onto it for future reference. HOWEVER: below are some of the reasons I know this book to be a worthwhile resource:1) This book was assigned to me a few years ago when I was enrolled in ASL course, taught by a Deaf teacher (who has been profoundly Deaf her whole life). We worked out of it for three semesters, and I remember it being good. I'm not entirely sure what the Deaf community or interpreters as whole have to say about this particular book, but the fact that it was used by a Deaf person-- I think that pretty much makes a good enough case for it as an authentic, trusted resource. I trust my former teacher's judgement since she was also very instructive about Deaf Culture and History.2) The grammar, syntax, etc specific to ASL is well-acknowledged and well-utilized in the book's lessons. This is always the first way to judge an ASL instruction book of any kind. That bit kind of goes along with the previous reason, but I feel it's important to make special mention of this!! Why is this important? ASL isn't signed English at all (That's actually called "SEE"-- Signed Exact English--not at all the same thing). That being said, any book that just provides signs without a proper grammar/syntax/etc tool-belt isn't worth learning from. (If you're not convinced this is important, ask yourself: would you buy a book to learn French if it didn't provide proper instruction on how to actually use French words in sentences?...probably not, I bet! Words become useless without the language structure) If you're going to learn a language, learn it in its entirety from a trusted place. This book certainly gives you this information, which is great.3) This is a good book to use if you have already taken ASL before and have the annoying problem of remembering the motion of signs..... but have forgotten their meaning. I had this problem recently, and I bought this because I remembered this book had decent-ish illustrations. I have been using it mostly as a reverse dictionary when needed. But it isn't just a dictionary, there are some exercises, guidelines and examples given-- there's a lot included. This book has a sister work book. It is the same name, same author just "workbook" attached at the end of the title-- I still have that one, and that's more work/ practice exercise heavy than this one is (it lacks the dictionary part, which is why you need this one!) That is also a good investment.4) There's a really good section in the back that lists tons of other Deaf books for further reading (pertaining to all language, history and culture topics, etc)

This book without a teacher fairly easy to understand. With this book with a teacher, you will lear ASL correctly and quickly.

Had tons of commonly used word

I took a class in Sign Language and this was very good.

It's helping me to learn sign language