Finger spelling is the shapes made with the fingers and hands to form the 26 letters of the alphabet. We use fingerspelling to spell out the names of people and places. We also use fingerspelling to spell out a word if we don’t know the sign.
It is easy to learn to fingerspell the letters but it takes lots of practice to finger spell smoothly and quickly and to understand the finger spelling of others.
If you are right-handed you will use your right hand as the dominant hand and vice versa if you are left-handed. This means that if you are right-handed, when you are fingerspelling, your right hand forms many of the letters on your left hand and vice versa if you are left-handed.
When you are finger spelling do not mouth the individual letters of each word, only mouth the complete word.
Try and look at a signer’s mouth for clues as well as their hands.
Watch Kathleen go through each of the letters of the alphabet
Now complete the finger spelling exercise below
