COSD 222
AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE (ASL) II

1. Catalog Entry

COSD 222. American Sign Language (ASL) II
Three hours lecture (3).

Prerequisites: COSD 221

For professionals serving deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) individuals. Includes deaf culture, functional language and legal issues in deaf education. Develops skills necessary to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL). Builds on basic ASL skills.

2. Detailed Description of Content of Course

This course is designed for prospective teachers and other professionals serving deaf/hard of hearing students in PreK-12 settings. It examines deaf culture, sign language in Deaf Education, and the rights of the Deaf community. The course is taught through ASL and focuses on the functional language and grammar around the following topics: describing and locating things in one’s environment, expressing needs and wants, making suggestions, expressing opinions, and describing personal life history and events.

• Describing and Locating Things in the Environment
  • Language Functions: give reason, make request, ask where, give specific location, correct and confirm information, open conversation.
  • Grammar: topic-comment structure, weak hand as reference, locative classifiers, yes/no questions, wh-questions, ordinal numbers, numbers: 101-119, multiples of 100 to 1,000.
• Expressing Needs, Wants, and Concerns
  • Language Functions: complain about others; make suggestions; make requests; ask for permission; express concern; decline, explain why; agree, with condition; agree, tell shortcomings; ask for clarification.
  • Grammar: recurring time signs; continuous time signs; temporal aspect of time signs; verb inflections; role shifting; conditional sentences; clock numbers.
• Exchanging Personal Information and Life Events
  • Language Functions: ask/tell when; tell about life events; ask nationality of name; narrate family immigration history; correct and elaborate.
  • Grammar: when clauses; phrasing for sequencing events; contrastive structure; possessive forms; descriptive and locative classifiers; dates and addresses.
• Deaf Culture
• Cultural Dimensions of Deafness and Deaf Education
• Deaf cultural factors that may influence classroom management
• Deaf community interactions

3. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course

Instructional strategies follow the functional-notional approach to second language learning. These focus on the communicative purposes of people’s everyday interactions. Emphasis is on functions that help students establish and maintain social relationships within the deaf community. Activities will include, labeling objects, role-playing, interactive classroom activities, videos and other audiovisual materials, projects, presentations, guest speakers, readings, internet use, and field trips. All instruction is presented through ASL.

4. Goals and Objectives of the Course

  Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to use ASL to:

• Give reasons and make requests using the topic-comment structure.
• Ask where and give specific locations using locative classifiers.
• Correct and /or confirm information using question structures.
• Demonstrate knowledge of ordinal numbers, numbers 101-109 and multiples of 100 to 1,000.
• Open a conversation using appropriate ASL etiquette.
• Describe people with a large variety of physical characteristics, clothing, hair styles and personal attributes.
• Express needs, wants and concerns using recurring and continuous time signs.
• Demonstrate knowledge of verb inflections.
• Make a request, ask for permission, and negotiate, using conditional sentence structure.
• Express concern by proper use of facial expressions and role shifting.
• Ask for clarification by using inflected verbs.
• Demonstrate knowledge of clock numbers.
• Ask and tell when, using appropriate “when” clauses.
• Tell about daily life and special life events, using contrastive structures and phrases for sequencing.
• Narrate family immigration history using possessive forms and descriptive / locative classifiers.
• Ask about nationality of a family name using contrastive structure and possessive forms.
• Correct and elaborate on information in the target language using descriptive and locative classifiers.
• Demonstrate knowledge on the proper use of numbers in dates and addresses.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Define temporal aspect and demonstrate knowledge by signing examples.
• Identify cultural dimensions of Deafness and Deaf Education.
• Demonstrate understanding of and proficiency in the language(s) needed to instruct D/HH children.
• Demonstrate knowledge of Deaf cultural factors that may influence classroom management.
• Actively seek and demonstrate the ability to interact with adults in the Deaf community to maintain/improve ASL, English signs or cues as consistent with program philosophy.
• Demonstrate understanding of the following communication modalities: ASL., Pidgin Signed English, and Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE).

5. Assessment Measures

Assessment measures may include written exams, videotape presentations, research, class participation, course assignments, projects, and observation reports.

6. Other Course Information

None

7.    Review and Approval