ASL Group Practice Sessions

HOW TO JOIN

We know how hard it can be to learn sign language without someone to practice with. And we understand that the pandemic has made it even harder to find opportunities to interact with other signers. That’s why we started our free weekly ASL group practice sessions in April 2020. It is our goal to help you connect with others and to improve your expressive and receptive skills with others who share your passion for sign language.

What others are saying

• Awesome community! Thank you Chris and Johnni! – Juliana Russell from The Language Mindset
• Thanks to @aslbasics for the opportunity to connect with others and teaching ASL! – Stephanie
• Really impressed with this group and sooo happy I can keep learning in this group every week! Very supportive. – Elizabeth
• I started this last week and made ASL friends. Friends are the best to improve and enjoy language learning. – Kaori
• So awesome, thank you! – Adam
• Made a new friend, practiced my ASL signing and my receptive skills. These group sessions are helping me improve and meet others learning ASL. I really appreciate this opportunity. – Kieran
• I loved it today, it was fun, especially meeting other signers. – Alejandra
• I feel so comfortable here and think this is the best for everyone! – Haley
• This has been a wonderful reintroduction for me to a language I’ve missed for a long, long time. Thank you! – Gale
• It’s been incredibly hard to learn by myself, thank you guys so much for creating this group! It means so much to me. – Steph
• Wednesday’s are my favorite! – Jordan ASL
• “I love the group sessions as they provide a gentle introduction to a wonderful language.” – Gale Leach
• “The weekly group practice sessions have been a great way for me to improve my signing skills, while meeting a lot of great people.  Every week is a little different, but everyone is always positive and it is helpful to practice signing with different people each week.” – Rachel Eglash

How to Join

We host free sessions every Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific time (8:00 PM Eastern) on Zoom. To increase the security and safety of these Zoom meetings we send out the link and password to those that are subscribed to our free newsletter. We value your privacy and time, so we only send out emails that are relevant and valuable to you. Our newsletter is designed to keep you informed and inspired about sign language and you can unsubscribe at any time. You can learn more here.

What to Expect

In the clip below, we briefly discuss what you can expect from our weekly practice sessions.

The first few minutes will be spent pairing each student with a practice partner that is of a similar skill level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced). Then each pair will be put into a “breakout room” where they can turn off their voices and use what they’ve learned to make the communication happen.

This is a great way to both increase your exposure to the language (comprehensible input) and have an opportunity to put into practice what you have been learning (comprehensible output). You can learn more about what comprehensible input and output are and why they are so important to learning a new language quickly with the video below.

The 3 Keys to Learning Any New Language

To help speed up the process of pairing up students at the start, you can add New, Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced to the end of your name. For example, if your name is Kimberly and you are a beginner, then on Zoom you can change your name to Kimberly (beginner).

I started this as a beginner and now I am an intermediate level because I met wonderful ASL friends here!

Kaori

During these sessions, I encourage you all to be patient with each other and please be kind. Remember that we are all at various stages of learning and that we’re all in this together. 

As mentioned earlier, we wholeheartedly want to offer this service to everyone for free for as long as possible, so if you would like to help support these types of programs to continue in the future, please consider visiting our Patreon page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know down in the comments below or you can contact us directly at chris@aslbasics.com. We look forward to meeting you and hope to see you at our next session. In the meantime, stay safe, take care, and keep on learning!