The theory of this "program" is sound and using it did increase my confidence in being able to communicate using sign, but not in the grammatical sense.

Chapters begin with a "Practice Learning Signs" section illustrating different sentences, with the sentences printed underneath(+). The bottom of each page usually gives brief descriptions of any new signs introduced (+)... It is essential to read these because the arrows don't always show the move-direction as described or the picture merges in with that of the next/previous sign so it is hard to tell the two apart(-). Both simple and "complex" words are used so you aren't endlessly reviewing simple "apple, box, cat" exercises (++).

This section is followed by a few other practice exercises to review (sign this sentence, match the sign to the word, etc.)

The last section of each chapter is "Practice Receiving Signs":

"Practice Receiving Signs" could be the most essential part of the book, but it fails to reach its potential. The phrases are VERBATIM the phrases of the first "Learning Signs" section. Once you've gone through it once, you don't need the illustrations to recite the phrases, so you are memorizing rather than learning (-). In future editions the authors should consider some variety between the "Learning Signs" and the "Receiving signs" sections.

My goal is to learn American Sign Language to communicate effectively within the Deaf community, but this book shows Signed English (exact word order) rather than ASL. Imagine taking a German sentence, for instance, and translating each word to English but not changing the word order and not taking into account words that should be left out or added. With concentration, you'll probably understand... but is vocabulary all you really want to know when learning a language? If you are serious about learning ASL, this book may steer you in the wrong direction (-). There are better books than this for learning ASL such as A Basic Course in American Sign Language.

Because of its ease of use, this book is appropriate if you are a casual learner of signing or specifically only want to learn Signed English.

Signing Made Easy by Rod R. Butterworth (1989)

Many years ago I went through a phase where I had a great desire to learn sign language. This book was one of the ones I purchased for my own personal reference and learning. What I enjoyed most about this specific book was that it was set up with lessons, drills, exercises, and other practice methods to help increase my comprehension. The illustrations for the signs are also well drawn, and easy to understand. For me, this book did make signing learning the basics of signing "easy", as the title states.

Excellent resource for our homeschool.

Would rather it be ASL instead of exact English.

I was taught the sign alphabet at a very young age; as a young adult I met a wonderful neighbor who was deaf. We signed to each other through my alphabet, I was always aware that he had much patience with me since he knew ASL. After his resent tragic death I made a vow to learn sign beyond the alphabet. I picked up this book and I am well on my way. This book has workpages for you to learn no only to sign to others but what it looks like to be signed to. So you learn so much better! Great job by the authors on their teaching technique!

This book made learning to sign very easy, I would recommend this book to anyone trying to learn sign language.

I wish it had more

A good introduction to conversational signing book. I recommend to parents of hard-of-hearing children.

I am currently trying to add another language to my life and why not choose the third or fourth most used language in the world (depending on what statistic you look at). So far this book is easy to comprehend and the illustrations of the signs are understandable. Hopefully after reading through it and practicing I will be able to have a conversation.

Bought this book