As an ASL teacher and a Deaf individual I'm very concerned about the flood of videos being created by ASL students who think they are qualified to be teaching such a beautiful and complex language.
ASL is being mangled and abused by "teachers" who don't fully understand the language and by "students" who don't make the effort to learn all the important little details (or aren't aware that there are a lot of those "little details"). So is it any wonder that so many Deaf people (myself included) are very unhappy with how our language is being warped?
ASL is precious to the Deaf community. We cherish it and wish it would get the respect that it deserves. Frankly, it worries me because so many of these so-called "teaching" videos on YouTube create and spread a lot of errors and misconceptions about sign language, thus making the problem even worse at an even more rapid rate.
This video is my comments to those who think it's "cool" to teach a language that they still don't understand themselves and suggestions to those who are interested in learning ASL accurately.
I'd like to ask a favor – If you would take some time to search for "sign language lessons Melissa Schenk" and then do a "thumbs down" on all of her signing videos, that would be wonderful. Ms. Schenk knows absolutely nothing about ASL. She is a "carpetbagger" that simply looked up signs out of a book and created videos. Ms. Schenk has made a number of "do it yourself" type videos for ExpertVillage (they pay you to do it) and her absolute, most popular videos are the signing ones. Thus, she is making money by teaching wrong signs. That disgusts me that she takes advantage of something she knows nothing about in order to make money by spreading incorrect information at the expense of the Deaf and our language. Please, vote thumbs down on her videos and even feel free to leave a comment.
http://www.WestwoodASL.com/moodle
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