God made you with a desire to communicate your feelings, thoughts, ideas and emotions. Most people do this by talking. But what if you can’t communicate using sound and speech? What if you’re deaf?

If you live in the United States or Canada, you might use American Sign Language (ASL). ASL is called a visual-gestural language. This means you use your eyes, face, body, hands and the space around you to communicate. You think with pictures, not words.

If you really want to learn sign language, you will have to concentrate on how things look and feel. You will have to learn to think with pictures.

Take a deep breath and practice changing the words that describe something into a picture of that thing. Maybe it’s the way your cat stretches after a long nap. Do you have a clear picture? Now see if you can act it out so that other people can understand you. Don’t be afraid to use your face and body. If you’re showing how scared you felt walking into a classroom for the first time, you can display that fear in your eyes, your tight jaw and your cringing body.

Because ASL is a visual language, eye contact is important. Hearing people feel rude if they never break eye contact. However, if you look away in a conversation with a deaf person, it means that the conversation is over.

Learning to communicate nonverbally, or without words, helps us look at situations and feel the emotions attached to them in a new way. The more you practice thinking and communicating with pictures and gestures, the better you will be able to learn formal ASL signs. You may also enjoy learning to “speak” words by finger spelling.

— Leigh-Ann Maloney