Sharing Interesting Facts: Whole-Part

Unit 19ASL III

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.

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.

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.

Whole-Part▪Facts that contain phrases such as “one out of” and “half of all” fall under the Whole-Part category.

▪Since the fact is essentially about the part, it must be distinguished from the whole to make the point.

▪Use the following structure to present whole-part facts.

Whole-Part: Translation Guide

1.Set up the whole (use raised eyebrows).

2. Tell about the part using either percentages, fractions, or ratio.

3. Contrast the part with the rest of the whole and comment.

Fact 1: FractionsVideo Notes:Since women constitutes the whole, it is established first, followed by the fraction ¼ to indicate the number of women addicted to chocolate. John further contrasts the part by saying the remaining ¾ of women are not addicted to chocolate. John raises his eyebrows to emphasize the numbers, followed by a slight pause before commenting on the fact. The manner in which you emphasize the number tells the listener that this is a rather large number or a surprisingly small number.

Click on the video to watch it. It will open in a new window.

John states the fact that “1 out of 4 women is addicted to chocolate.”

Rehearse this segment - use raised eyebrows when telling about the whole. Also, don’t forget to raise your eyebrows to emphasize the numbers, followed by a slight pause before commenting on the fact.

Fact 1: FractionsWhen the fraction

is ¼, ½, and up to 8/9, the palm of the hand faces the signer.

When the

denominator is 10 or larger like 1/10, 3/16, 7/20, etc., the palm of the hand for the numerator 1-9 faces the listener.

There is debate and variation among Deaf signers on exactly how to sign fractions (which way the palm faces). In this video, he explains that he prefers to sign fractions with the palm facing whichever way is easier and “flows” best per fraction. He also always signs both the numerator and denominator with the same palm orientation for each fraction. He signs numerators 1-5 with palm facing in, 6-9 palm facing out, 10 palm facing in again, and 11-up palm facing out again.

Practice along with the video, so that you can get the feel for how it “flows” more easily in the way explained above.

Fact 1: FractionsWatch and then try translating these additional sentences:

1. “2 out of 5 men wear eyeglasses.”

2. “3 out of 10 women have shoulder-length hair.”

Remember to convert the numbers to fractions before signing the fact.

Fact 1: RatioVideo Notes:To use ratio, John first identifies the whole “of all the women in the world,” then sets up a hypothetical group (giving a number) to represent the whole, “4 women” on his left (weak) side. Then after telling how many in this hypothetical group, John shows “1 woman” out of the group toward his right (dominant) side and makes the comment “is addicted to chocolate.” This construction requires the use of a conditional clause, which makes it more complicated to follow and use.

John translates the same fact that “1 out of 4 women is addicted to chocolate,” this time using ratio.

Rehearse this segment - use raised eyebrows when telling about the whole. Also, don’t forget to raise your eyebrows to emphasize the numbers, followed by a slight pause before commenting on the fact.

Fact 1: RatioRatio is used when

the signer doesn’t have time or doesn’t know how to convert the data to percentages or fractions.

Here’s some

examples of using basic ratios - “1 out of 4”, “2 out of 5”, and “5 out of 7”.

Try following along with these ratios.

Fact 2: PercentageVideo Notes:Stefanie begins with the whole “of all the books people buy,” followed by the part, “80% are paperbacks.” She contrasts this part by mentioning that the remaining books sold (20%) are hard covers. She uses contrastive structure to tell the part from the remainder. She emphasizes the numbers (80% and 20%) to help make the point. Stefanie ends by commenting on people’s obvious preference for paperbacks. Stefanie translates “books sold” by discussing the idea in terms of the number of books bought. By doing this, she focuses our attention on kind of books that the buyers chose, rather than emphasizing the kind of books the sellers chose to sell, which would have a different meaning than the one intended.

Stefanie states the fact that “8 out of every 10 books sold are paperback.”

Rehearse this segment using percentages. Remember to raise your eyebrows to set up the whole topic, use contrastive structure, and emphasize the number to help to make the point.

Fact 2: Percentage

For percentages, we sign a number followed by this sign.

Fact 2: RatioVideo Notes:

Stefanie begins with the whole “of all the books people buy,” followed by a hypothetical number, “for every 10 books that people buy,” and then states how many of these books (8) are paperbacks. Stefanie points to the number on her hand to emphasize the number 8.

Stefanie translates the same fact that “8 out of every 10 books sold are paperback” by using a ratio.

Rehearse this segment using this emphasizing technique.

ReviewThroughout this presentation, you have learned the following:

1.Translating Facts: Whole-Part a.Fractionsb.Ratioc.Percentages