Giving the actual dimensions of the ESL ASL bridge
I just finished reading LeAnn Nash's article, "ESL in a Different Light: Can You Hear Me Now?," in WLN 32.9. I enjoyed the article and think if offers some useful points and insights, but I feel that she did not go quite far enough on one point: ASL may directly translate to Standard American English, but the words do not always mean the same things. By this I mean that an ASL sentence can be translated directly to a SAE sentence, but that the exact words do not have the same meanings. For example, I worked with a Deaf student a few months ago. We did not have an interpretor for the first meeting, so we worked on the computer, each typing questions and answers. I thought the session went well. However, for the next appointment we did have an interpretor and when I started to work with through the interpretor, the paper took a different direction. The interpretor understood that some words mean different things in ASL, but the words are written and use exactly like SAE wor