Beginning American Sign Language I - ASL 101 at Northern Virginia Community College
https://courses.vccs.edu./colleges/nova/courses/ASL101-BeginningAmericanSignLanguageI
Effective: 2022-05-01
Course Description
Introduces cultural awareness, comprehension and production skills, and emphasizes basic sentence structure in American Sign Language with a focus on interactive communicative competence. Part I of II. This is a UCGS transfer course.
Lecture 4 hours. Total 4 hours per week.
4 credits
The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.
General Course Purpose
ASL 101 introduces students to both the practical elements of producing and comprehending American Sign Language (ASL) in common discourse while gaining an awareness of the culture, heritage, and civic values of the U.S. Deaf community.
Course Objectives
- Critical Thinking
- Compare students' own culture and customs with that of the U.S. Deaf community.
- Professional Readiness
- Collaborate with others and use the target language and cultural behaviors to communicate appropriately in personal and professional settings at a basic level.
- Interpersonal Skills
- Ask predictable questions and respond to them at a slower-than-normal speed.
- Identify and produce comprehensible words and phrases in simple conversation at a slower-than-normal speed.
- Communicate at a slower-than-normal speed on topics relating to basic personal information, family, school, and locations.
- Show awareness of most obvious cultural differences, as well as awareness of basic information of the communities that use the target language.
- Interpretive Skills
- Demonstrate emerging evidence of the ability to make inferences on background and prior knowledge.
- Rely primarily on vocabulary to derive meaning from context.
- Apply skills, such as scanning, recognizing Stokoe parameters (cognates), predicting meaning based on context, and/or recognizing linguistic roots to comprehend dialogue that is highly contextualized.
- Presentational Skills
- Present simple, basic information on very familiar topics using practiced or familiar words, simple sentences, and phrases.
- Create structured narratives in contexts relating to basic biographical information.
- Produce understandable words and phrases in frequently-practiced questions and statements.
- Intercultural Communication
- Show awareness of the most obvious cultural differences of the communities that use American Sign Language.
- Identify practices to help students relate to perspectives in Deaf subcultures.
- Integrated Topics and Perspectives
- Appropriate methods of introducing self to others
- Exchanging personal information
- Ability to discuss physical surroundings
- Telling where you live and how you travel
- Talking about your family
- Telling about activities
- Negotiating an environment using ASL
- An introduction to Deaf culture and community
Major Topics to be Included
- Interpersonal Skills
- Interpretive Skills
- Presentational Skills
- Intercultural Communication
- Appropriate methods of introducing self to others
- Exchanging personal information
- Ability to discuss physical surroundings
- Telling where you live and how you travel
- Talking about your family
- Communicating about activities
- Negotiating an environment using ASL
- An introduction to Deaf culture and community