About the Course:

This course is intended to give you some basic exposure to American Sign Language and its linguistic features, especially the unique features it has as a purely visual language- features which distiinguish it from spoken languages such as English. By the end of this course, students should know fingerspelling and numbers, some basic vocabulary, and be able to form basic sentences. We will discuss methods for describing signs, basic sentence structures such as Topic-Comment, WH-Questions, etc, the use of space, noun-verb pairs, use of classifiers, Non-Manual Signals, and poetic forms, as well as a few basic facts about Deaf culture and history in the U.S.A. and the history of ASL/ Although the class will be taught from the perspective of an interpreter, we will just focus on the language and Deaf culture rather than the interpreting process, and we will hopefully have some Deaf guest speakers.

How to Enroll:

Email leonelioness@yahoo.com for the course control number or with any further questions.

Class is from 5-7 on Thursdays in 262 Dwinelle. The first day of class is January 22.

I suggest you try and get The American Sign Language Phrase Book by Lou Fant from Amazon now. It's dirt cheap, and absolutely fantastic.

Upper classmen should enroll in 198, lower classmen in 98. Right now the class is set for 10 students in the 98 section and 10 in the 198 section, but that is purely arbitrary. There is a total limit of 20 students, however.