If you learned French or Chinese the same way you learned ASL you could have made the same argument for these languages. My comment wasn't a point about how ASL is taught or the pedagogy of ASL learning -- these are things I know nothing about. I was just explaining the linguistic properties of ASL. But you're right, in retrospect I should not have used the analogy with Chinese, it really isn't a good analogy since learning a spoken language is a different experience than learning a sign language. I was just trying to point out the "linguistic distance" between English and ASL.