Sign Language Companian - Cath Smith > Reviews (2)

I am currently studying year one British Sign Language (BSL) and found this book invaluable. It is a book containing all the basic words you would need to hold a conversation with someone about yourself and the world around you.

It is one of a series of books written by Cath Smith to help in the learning of BSL. Others include Signs Make sense and Sign in Sight.

It is divided into chapters covering various areas of life and the relevant words are included together with a picture and description showing how to ‘perform’ the corresponding sign. The pictures are clear and the written descriptions are easy to understand.

The book begins with an introduction to BSL, which explains the way in which signing is used and how it varies throughout the world, as it becomes more recognised as a minority language and is taught in mainstream schools.

There is then a guide to the captions used in the book and pictures of all the basic hand shapes used in signing and the terms used for their description.

Section One – Getting to Know You
This section deals with names, countries, towns and cities, as well as age, schools and work.

Section Two - Family, People and Other Animals
This section deals with the names of the members of the family such as mother, father, sister, brother etc. It also gives the signs for the main officials in our lives such as teacher, doctor, policeman, vicar etc. A few animals, mainly pets and common farm animals are in this section too.

Section Three – Conduct and Behaviour
This section is all about types of behaviour and the related words such as funny, silly, quiet, ill, fault, help, ignorance, polite etc.

Section Four – Sharing Ideas and Interests
The contents of this section include the major sports and leisure activities as well as seasons, weather and celebrations.

Section Five – Sharing Feelings and Relationships
This deals with emotions such as jealousy, love, hate, loneliness, etc and the words relating to emotions such as kiss and marry.

Section Six – Food and Drink
This is exactly what you would expect from the title! It covers the main foods and drinks including fruit, vegetables, meat, snacks and beverages.

Section Seven – Colour and Time and This and That
This section covers all the main colours, time, date, days, and various sundry words such as don’t and can’t.

There is also an appendix at the back of the book that shows the British two-handed fingerspelling alphabet.

At the start of each chapter there is a word list and at the end there is a puzzle to see how of the words you have learnt you can remember.

This would be an excellent book for study and revision in preparation for the year one examination, as part of that examination is a basic conversation.

It would be an ideal book for a deaf child to learn the basic signs for everyday life as the words are all common everyday words and the descriptions are so easy to understand.

I would also recommend this book to someone who was not studying for an examination but rather just wanted to communicate with a deaf person on a day to day basis.

The combination of this book and a good dictionary such as Communication Link by The Beverley School for Deaf Children would be sufficient to be able to communicate effectively with a deaf person.

One more thing in response to a comment on this opinion reminding me that I had forgotten something - the ISBN number is 0-285-63333-3 and my copy cost me £10.99 from Amazon.