Sharing Interesting Facts - Illustrating a Fact

Unit 19ASL III

Sharing Interesting Facts

People find themselves wanting to relay in their daily conversations interesting or amusing information they have heard about or read.

Interesting facts is the topic of this unit because these facts can be surprising, unbelievable, educational, and fun - the makings of an interesting conversation.

Sharing Interesting Facts

This unit is designed to help you develop good interpretations of written information. Specific grammar structures are introduced to help you organize the essential information to show the relevance of the information presented. Because of the concise nature of each fact, you need to learn how to analyze the fact to understand what it means.

When presenting the fact, you may have to explain, rephrase, demonstrate, or draw conclusions to convey the fact accurately. This lesson will help you be better able to interpret written information into ASL without the interpretation being unduly influenced by English structure. We selected facts that fit into four categories: whole-part, listing, comparisons, and illustrating a fact.

Translating Facts

The facts we will learn about are organized into four categories:

● Whole-Part● Listing● Comparisons● Illustrating a Fact

Each category has a particular grammatical structure. Later, you will use these structures when preparing your own facts to share.

Illustrating a Fact▪The final category in which we group facts are those that require the use of classifiers and role shift to clearly illustrate the facts.

Illustrating a FactTranslation Guide

1.Broach the subject. 2.Name the topic (use raised

eyebrows).3.Pose a rhetorical question.4.Explain.

Illustrating a FactWhen deciding how to translate the whole fact, think about: ▪which phrase you will use to broach the subject. ▪how role shift can help illustrate the point more clearly.▪what kind of interpretation would make the point of the fact clear.▪which nonmanual markers, rhetorical question or topic-comment, will help emphasize the point.

Illustrating a FactVideo notes:John begins by using classifiers to describe the circular and the spoke threads of the spider’s web; then shows how the spider travels on the spokes of the web. Notice how he broaches the subject by mentioning how surprised he was when he read the information in a newspaper.

John states “In a spider’s web, the circular threads are sticky and the spoke threads are dry. The spider always walks on the spokes, so it doesn’t get hung up in the web.”

Rehearse the segment. Try to broach the fact differently, by mentioning that you had heard about it on the radio, heard it from a friend or teacher, or saw it on TV. Tell how you reacted to this information when you first heard it.

Illustrating a FactHere are a couple more examples of using classifiers and role shifting when illustrating a fact.

ReviewThroughout this presentation, you have learned the following:

Translation Guide for Illustrating a Fact:

1.Broach the subject. 2.Name the topic (use raised eyebrows).

3.Pose a rhetorical question.4.Explain.