2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Illustrating a Fact
Translation Guide
1. Broach the subject.
2.Name the topic (use raised eyebrows).
3. Pose a rhetorical question.
4.Explain.
7. Illustrating a Fact
When 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.
8. Illustrating a Fact
Video 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.”
9. Illustrating a Fact
Here are a couple more examples of using classifiers and role
shifting when illustrating a fact.
10. Review
Throughout 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.
