[sw-l] im a very poor salesman of the SW!

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 6, 2005

On Mar 6, 2005, at 6:49 AM, Sandy Fleming wrote:
> Isn't there a slimmer version of the manual in PDF that I could hand to
> someone without it getting rejected as an impossibly fat book?

I would NEVER give a person who never heard of something, a thick
manual teaching them the subject matter, before they have seen
something simple.... My goodness...that would frighten me! Or at least
they should know, when you show it to them, that there are simpler
documents that they can download on the web...

Our textbook is for advanced or serious users, and it is not used to
introduce SignWriting to people who have never heard of the
system...Obviously we have to have a thick book for experts who need a
reference manual...But I introduce SignWriting differently...

For people who have never seen SignWriting before, and know ASL, I
usually start with a Goldilocks story written in ASL with some English
on the page too...I teach them through a children's story...and if they
know ASL they read it quickly and are amazed...within a half hour I can
get them reading simple sentences without much training, and they never
even know there is a textbook nor do they care!

We have five-year-old Deaf children in Albuquerque reading the basic
Goldilocks books...so beginners can too, if they are given a chance...

And if the person doesn't know any sign language, even they will sit
amazed at a written sign language document, and they suddenly realize
that this is a real writing system...

Plus there are many smaller little sample manuals on the web for
download...and I will post links to those documents later today - When
I give lecture demonstrations, for example, I use two specific
documents...and they are just a few pages long and are great to
introduce the concept...so later I will give you those links...

Val ;-)