Course Description
Continuation of some themes from Level 5. Students will learn more vocabulary, particularly ASL classifiers used to describe objects, their shape, texture, use and movement. Students will engage in dialogue and narrative practice to improve fluidity and fluency, in formal and informal registers. Students will continue to learn about issues in Deaf people’s lives today, as well as notable contributions by Deaf people in the past.
Course Content
The content includes:
Sentence structures, vocabulary and narrative techniques needed for:
- Describing and identifying objects
- Talking about the weekend
- Exchanging personal information and life events
- Depicting a timeline for life and/or world events
- Storytelling techniques
- ASL classifiers for size, texture, movement and use of an object
- Verb inflections for temporal aspect
- Creating traditional ASL handshape poetry
- Expansion of knowledge of ASL’s numbering systems
Conversational strategies:
- Directing and maintaining attention
- Using confirming and clarifying questions
- Asking for help with spelling of names
Some notable Deaf people in history:
- Deaf spies in American Civil War
Learning Activities
Class activities may include: lecture and language lab, demonstration/modelling, dialogue and small group conversational practice, course readings/videos, among others.
Means of Assessment
This course will conform to the Douglas College Evaluation Policy regarding the number and weighting of evaluations. Typical means of evaluation may include a combination of:
- Quizzes to evaluate factual knowledge of ASL & Deaf culture
- Quizzes to evaluate receptive ASL skills
- Demonstration of expressive ASL skills
- Assigned dialogues and interaction
- Attendance and participation
Sample grade breakdown for this course might be as follows:
Video assignment 1: 20%
Video assignment 2: 20%
Mid-term exam 1: 20%
Mid-term exam 2: 20%
Final exam: 20%
Total: 100%
No single assignment will be worth more than 20%.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate intermediate conversational ASL skill to do the following:
- Describe objects’ shape, size, texture
- Define something by how it looks, how it works, how it is made
- Create and narrate some life events such as about a person from birth to death (eg. a well-known actor or politician)
- Narrate briefly any world events (eg. establishment of Gallaudet University or schools for the Deaf in Canada)
- Recognise and use ASL number formats for dates and for money
- Perform a simple ASL rhyming handshape poem
- Narrate about weekend activities with temporal aspect
- Demonstrate the use of appropriate register in ASL when narrating or storytelling
- Demonstrate appropriate conversation strategies and reciprocal signals
- Recognise and use appropriate ASL sign directionality and spatial movement/agreement in all 3 dimensions
- Name some Deaf figures from history
Textbook Materials
The instructor might choose an ASL textbook such as:
Smith, Cheri. (2008). Signing Naturally 2. Student Workbook. San Diego, CA: DawnSignPress.