Prerequisites: ASL 1140; ASL 2150

This course is designed to advance students’ sign language skills towards conversational proficiency.  Students will continue to develop expressive and receptive American Sign Language (ASL) skills to an advanced level, participating in larger group conversations of varying topics.  Students will increase their knowledge of ASL grammatical principles and Deaf culture.  Students in this course shift from “learning to sign” to “signing to learn” by participating in larger group conversations of varying topics that focus heavily on implications for future careers.

By the end of the course, students will...

• communicate through advanced-level conversations about varying topics, utilizing feedback from communication partners to monitor comprehension and guide conversation (Standards 1.1, 1.2, 3.1) within and beyond the classroom (Standards 5.1, 5.2).
• prepare and deliver live and electronic presentations, describing and demonstrating linguistic features of ASL at an advanced level (Standard 1.3).
• engage in appropriate social interactions using products that are acceptable in Deaf Culture, such as DeVIA (art), Deaf/ASL Literature, tangible Deaf Culture, as well as discussing the ideas and perspectives associated with them (Standards 2.1, 2.2, 3.2), and comparing them to their own (Standard 4.2).
• compare and contrast ASL with English in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, and grammatical features at an advanced level (Standard 4.1).
• explain characteristics and impacts of hearing and hearing loss on speech and language at an advanced level (Standard IV-C).
• demonstrate an understanding of and respect for multiple perspectives of deafness (Standard IV-D).

Required Readings

• Relevant readings, to include research articles, will be assigned and posted to the course website.