Yes, there’s homework. I’ll just give you a sampling of what’s required in each section of homework as I come to it. 

The first homework assignments come at the end of the first section and involves identifying the handshape, location and movement of lists of signs and identifying similarities and differences of these elements between signs.

This goes to the study of linguistics of ASL and the importance of understanding that these elements have a massive impact on the clarity of your signing. Changing just one of these elements can change the meaning of what you’re signing. It’s also important to realize that completely unrelated signs may share one or more of the parameters while maintaining their individual meaning.

For example:
The sign UGLY shares the same handshape and movement as the sign SUMMER, but a different location. It shares the same movement and location as WORN-OUT, but a different handshape. And it shares the same location as KID, but different movement and handshape.

One I found challenging was DISCUSS. It contains two different handshapes (honestly, I’m not sure if I was supposed to focus on just the dominant handshape, but I found a sign that shared the same handshape for both hands). SHOW shares the same handshapes and location, but different movements. ARGUE has the same movement and location, but different handshapes.

The most difficult I found to be MONKEY. SALAD shares the same handshape and movement. And any sign that uses the classifier of bent 5-handshape would be the same handshape, but I wracked my brain for a sign that shares the same space as MONKEY, and I couldn’t think of one!

Anyone have a suggestion? And I’m sure someone will suggest something super obvious and I’m going to face-palm. I promise to take a picture and post it if that happens.

There was further homework building on these principles, but I won’t go into that here. I haven’t finished all of it either. One great thing about this textbook is that it includes a DVD with samples to look at and analyze for homework, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it.

I found this to be a good exercise in really analyzing and understanding different signs, their relationships to each other and how the different parameters of sign are used to change the meaning of different signs. I was a little surprised at how difficult I found some of the problems, but I’ve been out of school for some time, so I’ll blame it on that.