Instant Immersion American Sign Language Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been signing for almost ten years, and my wife works professionally as an interpreter. I recently picked this package up as a handy refresher to keep my skills sharp. For under $$$, it seemed like a good deal. Unfortunately, this suite of "learning tools" left a lot to be desired. First of all, if you're using XP, expect a whole slew of compatibility problems. The few programs I was able to get working suffered from very poor interface design, and worse yet, presented the user with incorrect information. For example, the Personal Communicator lets the user type in English phrases to get a video ASL interpretation. What the program displayed for you was a literal English word-order translation of the phrase. Words that did not appear in the sparse word list were then fingerspelled. There was absolutely no consideration of ASL grammar or structure. Thus, a sentence like "How long have you been an interpreter?" was translated with the literal signs for "how" (as in, "how does this work?"), "long" (as in "that road is long"), "have" (as in "can I have some water?"), and so on. If you've ever taken a real ASL course, you know how wrong this is. A true ASL representation should have read something like "interpreter how-long (time) you?" In all fairness, creating a program advanced enough to do such an accurate conversion would probably cost much more, but by presenting new ASL students with this sort of misrepresentation is destructive to the language rather than constructive. Another program, the English-ASL dictionary, is nothing more than a copy of a University of Michigan ASL web site, not a carefully designed learning aid for home use.
Bottom line, if you're really serious about learning this wonderful language, do yourself a favor and enroll in a class at a local college or community center. It is the ONLY way to truly learn this language and begin to experience deaf culture. If you want to practice at home, I would recommend The American Sign Language Dictionary 10th Anniversary Edition. It's far more accurate and does a much better job of teaching ASL grammar, deaf culture, and sign vocabulary.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Instant Immersion American Sign Language

MANUFACTURER WARRANTY: 90

Click here for more information about Instant Immersion American Sign Language