Best Known as The Garden Books, the American Sign Language books provide teachers and students of American Sign Language (ASL) with the complete means for learning the culture, community, and the native language of deaf people. A group of 15 ASL teachers and linguists reviewed all five books to ensure that they were accurate and easy to comprehend. Drawing upon linguistic research and the methods developed in the field of second/foreign language instruction, including their own resources and experiences, authors Baker-Shenk and Cokely have developed an interactive approach to teaching and evaluating ASL supported by numberous activities and techniques in a six-course curriculum. The continuing popularity of these teacher resources and course texts proves their effectiveness as unique guides on teaching Deaf culture and ASL, and learning to understand and sign ASL.

The three Student Texts are designed to help Students acquire conversational ability in ASL and an awareness and appreciation of deaf people. Each text contains nine instructional units that present major grammatical features of ASL through dialogues, introduce students to the intricate features of ASL structure, and discuss individual grammatical features, with sample drills to reinforce mastery of each one.