Belmontes 1

Paola Belmontes
Ms. Shaffer
English 1 GATE
22 January 2017

Sign Language
A beneficial form of communication

Group Members: None just myself

Passion/Learning Opportunity: The project of learning sign language is helping me feed my
hunger of knowledge. I am looking forward to knowing this awesome new form of
communication that can not only expand what I know, but I may also enlarge my communication
skills that hopefully on the way lead to good. I expect to learn how to communicate with speech
impaired people and change how society thinks about this language. Many people believe that
this language is not necessary, but this language can help bond our community with people with
disabilities who thought were never part of it in the first place.
Needs/Opportunities: In my opinion my project is something important and worth my time
because sign language can help our society communicate with people who are speech
impaired. It can break boundaries for people who thought they could never be listened to or
understood. It is solving the problem of many teens around the world that are ignored day to day
because they are not able to communicate with other students and even teachers because
finding a person that knows sign language is very rare even though it's not a hard language to
learn if you know you alphabet and how to spell which includes everyone above 3rd grade, but
still these people are nowhere to be found. I want to be one of those people that can help
improve our society and communication because communication is key in a good friendship
and everywhere you go.
Audience/Client/Users: Teens who want to learn a new form of communication that they might
utilize in the future. This might also help speech impaired teens in our school because if I
manage to aspire people to learn this language and they do so students who are unable to talk

Belmontes 2
can have many other people to talk to and wont feel ignored. Teachers can also benefit from
learning sign language because they can have a better and new way to communicate with their
speech impaired students and there will be no need for special classes that will make the
impaired students feel left out and different from teens their age .
Timeline:

Date

Task

January 27-17

Get books from library

February 3-17

Research online

February 10-17

Start memorizing Alphabet A-E

February 17-17

Memorize E-J

February 24-17

Memorize H-L

March 3-17

Memorize M-Q

March 10-17

Memorize Q-V

March 17-17

Memorize V-Z

March 24-17

Learn days all the days of the week

March 31-17

Review what I learned

Start on my presentation

April 7-17
Answer 20% questions
April 14-17
April-21-17

Put in all the alphabet and weekdays in my

presentation

April 28-17

Practice presentation

May First week of may

Project Presentation (TED talk)

Product: For my final product I will create a presentation teaching sign language. By teaching
sign language I can help teens in our class become interested and teach them many things
about sign language that they can later on may need or use. Learning this language takes some

Belmontes 3
time, but it is never wrong to try to communicate with people who dont really do so because no
one understands them. Also why would you miss the opportunity to know a new language
especially when it's as easy as hand gestures. Knowledge is very important in life so never
avoid any of it when you have the opportunity to learn something new.
Needs/Possible Issues: What I need to accomplish my project is a clear mind in order to learn,
books and the Internet. I might see problems with time management and difficulty learning all
those hand gestures. I might also have trouble making my presentation fun in order to motivate
teens to learn this very beneficial language.This will be a simple, but hard to do project it will
certainly take a lot of memorization and time. I am sure there will be many more obstacles and
things that are going to be hard to do, but it all has be done. I might also have difficulty putting
my presentation together and not becoming nervous when I am presenting. If I happen to
become nervous than my presentation will become awkward instead of convincing and it will
ruin the whole purpose of the presentations. So I have to make sure to be confident.
Conclusion: I am very excited to learn sign language because it will not only help me but many
other teens and even teachers. Sign language should be a language everyone should know
because it has the power to unite our community with the people who think they are simply not
past or because they are different. It would be awesome that no matter if you can speak or not
you will be listened to and understood. This will improve the self esteem of many speech
impaired people and it will improve the knowledge of society. Especially teens who are our
future generation,for we want the best for them in order to keep humanity humble and safe.