Storytelling
Enjoy the story "The Tooth Tale" (2009) in ASL by Jolanta Lapiak. English translation is also provided below. It's a true story that took palce in 1994.
One morning a ten-year-old brother was excited to show his latest extracted tooth to her sister who had just returned home from university. He unfolded his hand, "Hey, look what I have here."
His sister nodded, smiling "neat."
He continued, "I'm gonna put it under the pillow tonight. How much money do you think mom will put under the pillow?"
The sister looked at his little brother with amusement and hesitation for a moment, "Uhm, well, you see in my early life, I have never had any money under the pillow and there was no tooth fairy in our culture. Instead, we always put extracted teeth into either house plant soil or ground outside. In this way, it would bring your teeth a healthy growth." Not necessarily believing in this such thing herself, she merely showed him another option between a materialistic culture and a spiritual view.
The brother, who had uneven, slightly decayed teeth in real life, thought for a moment. He was aware that his sister had perfectly even, healthy teeth. He darted straight to the nearest houseplant and inserted his tooth into the soil. He came back with a big smile from ear to ear.
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These tutorials explain the structure and transitions, role-shifting, pronominalization, verb inflections and agreements, classifiers, conjunctions, and closing for ASL students of the intermediate level.
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New to sign language? "Where do I start?" or "How do I start learning sign language?" This ASL Rookie guide lists some selected links to the tutorials for ASL beginners to get started and keep rolling. It may be a useful review for intermediate-level learners and ASL students as well.
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Are you able to carry everyday conversations in ASL? Are you a student in the intermediate levels and beyond, who wishes to boost up your signing skills? You've come to the selected tutorial series. (Some premium content are available to PatronPlus membership.)
Stories, poems, performance arts, etc. in sign language.
This documentation project follows a child's language acquisition, literacy development, and phonological acquisition in sign language, specifically ASL, from newborn to age five in a natural native-ASL environment and visual culture.