Chapters 6 and 7: Sentence Structure and Written Form

I am getting the impression that hearing people learning ASL are determined to connect ASL to some sort of speaking language, whether it be English or French, so they have something to relate to and grasp hold of instead of just letting ASL be its own independent language.  It's not English, okay.  So it must be like French, then!  No.  People are uncomfortable with what they do not understand, and the idea of a purely visual, independent language is quite foreign and not the least bit understood among most hearing people.  Yes ASL has influences of other languages, but all languages do.  I wish we could just accept that we need to let go of our English-habit-assumptions and be sponges to soak up the ways of ASL and not insist on making connections.  I suppose that is only human, though.  I have never been good at labeling the different parts of sentence structure in English, so I am not sure how to approach glossing.  I think I shall learn more effectively through examples than through trying to comprehend that ASL sentence structure is OSV where as English sentence structure is typically MSVO...none of that means anything to me.  So I for one shall do my best to be a sponge and just try to soak up sentence structure so I don't have to think about it so much.  

As far as learning goes, I rather like that ASL does not have a written form.  When I was attempting to learn Spanish in high school, we simply read lists of Spanish vocabulary and examined grammar charts.  We very rarely spoke Spanish and we never had to prove that we could comprehend it.  With ASL, watching and communicating and not having the excuse of "oh, I'll just write this down and work on remembering it later" (and never actually looking back over it) is not an option.  We have to grasp the moment of exposure and if we forget, figure out a way to see the sign again.  It is a much more effective learning process.  I need to work on glossing as I have not experimented with it very much as of yet.