A practical approach to sign language learning for institutional staff

Hearing people, when learning sign language, have much more difficulty recognizing signs than producing them (Poor, personal communication, July 17, 2003; Tennant & Brown, 1998). This work outlines a new approach to solving this problem and incorporates the approach in a new practice tool, designed to accommodate a specific population of sign language learners, staff members at the Mabley Developmental Center in Dixon, Illinois. The practice tool also incorporates the ability to look up an unknown sign based on the handshapes used to produce it.