American Sign Language

Take an American language for foreign language credit or just to learn a new way to communicate Students enrolled in American Sign Language acquire an understanding of multiple aspects of deaf culture, including its history, alphabet, vocabulary, correct grammatical structures, conversational behaviors, and social customs. Blinn offers four semesters of ASL with students’ skill level advancing each semester to the point of fluency.

SGNL 1401 AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE I
Credit: 4 semester hours (3 class hours, 2 lab hours per week)
An introduction to American Sign Language and deaf culture. Acquire an understanding of multiple aspects of deaf culture, including its history, alphabet, vocabulary, correct grammatical structures, conversational behaviors, and social customs.

SGNL 1402 AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE II
Credit: 4 semester hours (3 class hours, 2 lab hours per week)
Conducted mainly without voice, this course focuses on sign vocabulary, numbers, finger spelling, and deaf culture. Emphasis is placed on the enhancement of both receptive and expressive skills and on the application of rudimentary syntactical structure.

Prerequisite: SGNL 1401 or permission of the division chair.

SGNL 2301 AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE III
Credit: 3 semester hours
Extensive exposure to body language and ASL. Emphasis on comprehensive and expressive skills, as well as the linguistic features of the language taught in context.

Prerequisites: SGNL 1401 and 1402 or permission of the division chair.

SGNL 2302 AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE IV
Credit: 3 semester hours
Further study in ASL, its vocabulary, grammar, syntax, manual and non-manual aspects, as well as cultural features. Students will analyze selected literary works in ASL, integrate skills in discourse styles and structures, and apply the concept of contextualization to narratives. Development and practice of conversational skills in expressive and receptive areas of ASL.

Prerequisites: SGNL 1401, 1402 and 2301 or permission of the division chair.

Course Day/Time:  

M/W   SGNL 1401  01 - 1:10 -2:25 pm/2:35-3:40 pm

T/TH   SGNL 1401 A1 - 9:10 -10:25 am/10:35-11:25 am

T/TH   SGNL 1401 A2 - 12:00-1:15 pm/1:25-2:15 pm

T/TH   SGNL 1401 A3 - 2:50-4:05 pm/4:15-5:05 pm

Facts:

• ASL is the dominant language of the deaf community in the United States.

• ASL is used by approximately 500,000 to 2,000,000 people in the United States. 

• ASL is a visual-gestural language with its own syntax and grammar, and supporting its own culture.

• ASL has four sections: facial expressions, body language, mime and gestures and much more.

• ASL is a language distinct from spoken English.

• ASL is not a universal language.  Other countries have their own native sign language.

History

In 1755, Abbe Charles Michel De l'Epee of Paris founded the first free school to educate deaf people.  He knew that deaf people could develop communication with each other and the hearing world through gestures and body language.   

In the early 1800s, Thomas Gallaudet set out to help educate his young, deaf neighbor Alice Cogswell.  He travelled in Europe collecting information about deaf education and learned there are two approaches:  manual and oral.  Gallaudet enlisted the assistance of Parisian deaf educator Laurent Clerc to establish the first American School for the Deaf (Hartford, CN, 1817) with Clerc as the United States’ first deaf sign language teacher. Other schools soon followed in other states.

Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was established in 1864 and remains the only liberal arts college for deaf people in the world. 

Today, high schools and colleges offer ASL courses as foreign language credits.  They help students to enhance their signing skills and knowledge about deaf culture. 

There is a great demand such as for teachers for the deaf, counselors for the deaf, lawyers for the deaf, deaf consultants, and other professionals.

Instructor: 
Robyn J. Marcak, 979-209-7529
robyn.marcak@blinn.edu

Page last updated: March 30, 2010
Page maintained by: Leslie Janac