Effective: 2022-05-01

Course Description

The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.

General Course Purpose

ASL 261 provides students with the opportunity to become skilled in Advanced ASL conversational fluency while developing an understanding and awareness of the culture, heritage, and civic values of the U.S. Deaf community.

Course Prerequisites/Corequisites

Prerequisite: ASL 202 or by placement test.

Course Objectives

• Critical Thinking
• Apply basic critical thinking skills to begin to solve problems and make sense of complex issues.
• Professional Readiness
• Collaborate with others and continue to use American Sign Language and cultural behaviors to communicate appropriately in personal and professional settings at an advanced level.
• Interpersonal Skills
• Control language sufficiently to be easily understood by those interacting with advanced language learners.
• Ask for clarification, self-correction or restatement when not understood, and circumlocute to maintain conversation.
• Sustain spontaneous signed conversations and discussions on familiar and some unfamiliar concrete topics.
• Discuss and explain information, incorporating various time frames, with a series of connected sentences, paragraphs and probing questions.
• Interact and negotiate to resolve an unexpected complication that arises in a familiar situation, providing detailed explanations and offering a variety of resolutions.
• Interpretive Skills
• Demonstrate evidence of the ability to identify the underlying message and some supporting details across time frames in informational and fictional video texts and other forms of media.
• Show understanding of cultural and linguistic differences when discussing current events, social issues, popular culture, and the arts.
• Identify main ideas and supporting details in ASL literary forms.
• Demonstrate sufficient control of language (vocabulary, structures, conventions of signed language, etc.) to understand fully and with ease more complex and descriptive texts with connected language and cohesive devices.
• Presentational Skills
• Present relevant evidence of the ability to tell or retell a story based on concrete experiences in academic, social and professional settings using organized paragraphs.
• Demonstrate the ability to create detailed messages in context relevant to oneself, to general interest and to work-related topics.
• Present an argument with supporting evidence based on concrete experiences in academic, social and professional settings using organized paragraphs.
• Intercultural Communication
• Suspend judgment and adapt language while critically examining products and practices to help relate to perspectives in native and other cultures using the target language.
• Interact with individuals from other cultures using American Sign Language at a functional level while adhering to basic social and professional norms and etiquette.
• Interact in complex situations to ensure a shared understanding of culture.
• Integrated Topics and Perspectives
• Utilizing the weak signing hand as a reference
• Conveying the process by which one makes major decisions, including choosing a career, purchasing a home, and starting a family.
• Identifying and describing the linguistic elements involved with extended discourse in ASL
• Presenting positive and negative attributes about someone or something they know
• Demonstrating the ability to plan a trip including negotiating locations, travel methods, activities, timeframe and budget.
• Utilizing depicting signs

Major Topics to be Included

• Interpersonal Skills
• Interpretive Skills
• Presentational Skills
• Intercultural Communication
• Utilizing the weak signing hand as a reference
• Conveying the process by which one makes major decisions, including choosing a career, purchasing a home, and starting a family.
• Identifying and describing the linguistic elements involved with extended discourse in ASL
• Presenting positive and negative attributes about someone or something they know
• Demonstrating the ability to plan a trip including negotiating locations, travel methods, activities, timeframe and budget.
• Utilizing depicting signs