Topic Entertainment's" Instant Immersion-American SIgn Language"- 2 CD Set

There are easy ways to learn ASL, and there are hard ways. Unfortunately Topic Entertainment's "Instant Immersion - American Sign Language" appears to be one of the hard ways.

It's a 2 CD program, dual platform, so you can use it on a Mac and PC both.

The first CD is the "Personal communicator", It has a word processor, where you can import or type text and an actor will sign it for you. At least that was the idea. While the CD package claims to have over 2,500 signs for over 4,500 English words, I find I can't get through a single sentence with out the program either having to fingerspell words, or skip them entirely, because it doesn't know them. The actor is very small and the signs are often very difficult to see clearly. I often wonder why, while you can change the skins around the signer, you can't change the size to something larger and more usable.

The Personal Communicator also has an English - ASL dictionary, which will seem very limited to people with a medium or large vocabulary, and the "ASL Playroom". The ASL playroom is a static picture of a child's room where you can click on objects and the very small signer will sign them. I can see where it might be fun for children, or somewhat useful for those to have them, but for single adults who are trying to learn ASL, it's simply annoying. Especially since they didn't have any other rooms, which might be useful, like the kitchen and bath.

The second CD is called "Signlink". It contains over 1000 video clips, for more than 2, 300 hundred English words as well as resource material on the American Deaf culture and signing. It also includes several grammar lessons that cover topics such as fingerspelling, numbers and pronouns. I found this inclusion of the grammer section puzzling, since the word processor on the first CD gives you literal translations of what you type in, with absolutely no regard for ASL grammar at all. That's right, this 2 cd set will teach you how to sign, incorrectly ! This is perhaps the better CD of the two, and while the topics covered are useful, and the signers a bit larger, you can find most of this information for free on the internet.

You can usually find the CDs at stores like CompUSA, or buy the set on Ebay for about $10.00 USD. While it's probably worth it for people who need to learn sign language and don't have an internet connection that can use the several very good sites on the internet, or those with a lot of patience, if you have broadband access, or already know a few signs, the set is likely to just annoy you.

If you are serious about learning to Sign ASL, I'd advise one of the easy ways: take a class. get a tutor, or even learn using the excellent resources online, but skip this CD package. It's only useful if you want a less then 50-50 chance that the word you want to look up is on it. Most of us already have enough frustration in our lives, and paying $9.95 to get more just doesn't seem worth it.