Legal Interpreting Skill Development:
Improving Comprehension of ASL Legal Texts
This activity guide enhances legal interpreting skills by offering strategies to improve understanding of an ASL message.
Comprehension Strategies
One of the most effective ways to enhance your ASL receptive skills is through regular and productive association within the Deaf Community. Learning to NEGOTIATE for understanding is critical. It is easy to get frustrated and just give-up. But there are effective ways to get at the information you missed. Merely asking to have information repeated is not enough. Try some of these strategies:
- If you do not catch a fingerspelled word, ask if it is the name of a person, place,
or thing. This information, along with the context in which the word was spelled,
will often help you to understand the word much quicker than having it respelled several
times.
- When there is a portion of a message you miss, paraphrase for the deaf person what you have understood up to that point. This demonstrates that you are not totally lost, but just looking for a certain piece of information.
- Another strategy is to ask questions about what you do understand. For example, if
you miss a part of a message relating to a person’s work, ask if the part you missed
was about their job or something that happened at their place of employment. Often
by asking questions, you will more readily get the context and details you missed.
This also indicates to the deaf person that you share in the responsibility for negotiating
understanding.
- Ask questions about what you missed, based on the context you have understood so far. Ask whom, what, when, where, why and how questions as a starting place. Also, try to predict possible relationships between pieces of information and suggest them to the deaf person. They will guide you into the right answers when they see you are committed to helping yourself UNDERSTAND.
Another way to improve comprehension is to view and analyze ASL LEGAL texts from a variety of speakers. View a text and map what you understand. View again in an effort to use the mapping from your first viewing and expand your understanding of missing pieces. Keep building your comprehension of the text until you understand it all. If you find you are missing the same kind of information each time — such as information that is fingerspelled or numbers or pronouns (who is speaking or who is the agent and receiver of action) or transitions between topics, then work on those pieces by engaging in activities described in the General Skills Development section.
ASL Texts with Legal Content
Media - Legal Content houses the media clips of legal content in ASL as well as a mock trial with interpreters.
A PDF version of this guide is available - Improving Comprehension of ASL Legal Texts
Grant Recognition
The contents of the Project CLIMB website was developed under a grant (#H160D160001) from the Department of Education. The contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education. Do not assume endorsement by the Federal government.
As of December 31, 2021, this grant project is no longer active or soliciting applications.
This website will remain available as a resource.
The National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials (NCRTM) website is a central portal for accessing archived and new rehabilitation training resources offering search capabilities, a quality rating system, as well as enhanced usability and accessibility.
