ITHACA NY — Every Tuesday night between 5:00-7:00pm in the study area at the Barnes & Noble on Meadow street, you can find freshman high school student, Aurora Golden-Appleton leading the weekly American Sign Language (ASL) Practice Group.
Golden-Appleton founded the practice group in August 2015 when an ASL student she knew expressed an interest in starting a group. Although Golden-Appleton is not herself a member of the Deaf community she has been signing since she was young. The two organized the meeting together but Golden-Appleton’s cofounder was only able to attend one meeting so Golden-Appleton assumed all the responsibilities, including organizing and leading the meetings.
The ASL practice group is open to anyone who is interested in finding a place where they can practice and further develop their signing skills. On average the group has between 6-8 participants per meeting. Golden-Appleton says there are around five “core participants” who can be expected almost every week but those are not the only attendees. The group additionally sees one or two new participants per meeting. That number can also vary depending on the given week. Golden-Appleton described that on some weeks they have a larger influx of new people. The participants range from members of the Deaf community to college, high school and graduate school students.
What brings people to this weekly group meeting also varies. Some of the group members come because they would like to practice what they have been learning in their classes, in local schools and universities, like Ithaca College, Cornell University and SUNY Cortland. Others come to meet new people an get to know other members of the Deaf community.
One pint five percent of New York State residents are deaf which amounts to 185,731 people. In Ithaca specifically, Golden-Appleton commented on the need for the ASL practice group. She said, “while Ithaca’s Deaf community isn’t particularly large, we have still have quite a few Deaf Ithacans.”
Additionally Ithaca College has a well known audiology department and this practice group is a place for people taking classes to converse and practice their skills. “One of the biggest hardships for many self-taught signers is that they do not have any real signed interactions. Receptive skills are so integral to skilled signing,” explained Golden-Appleton.
Hana Motoki, freshman occupational therapy student who plans on taking ASL 1 in the fall of her sophomore, spoke about the importance of having the ASL practice group. This allows her to practice what she learns in her classes. She said, “you can only learn so much in a classroom and having a place to practice within the community allows you to get ‘real life’ experience.”
Reesa Hylton: Multimedia Journalist 