American Sign Language (ASL)

Ample research in recent decades has proven without a doubt that ASL is a complete, separate language, with a grammar and syntax of its own. As one linguist explains, "ASL is a fully developed human language, one of the hundreds of naturally occurring signed languages of the world. It is not a derivative of English. It is not a 'simplified' language-it contains structures and processes which English lacks (such as ASL's rich verbal aspect and classifier systems)."

Why take American Sign Language?

1. Ability to use ASL and knowledge of Deaf Culture are valuable work-related skills to students majoring in several different professions such as speech-language pathology, audiology, education (including but not limited to special education), social work, allied medicine, nursing, business, communications, and computer technologies.
2. Many students become interested in ASL because they favor a less non-traditional kind of language and way of learning language. As an embodied, interactive, visual-spatial language with no current written component to it (but with all the complexity and nuances of a written language), ASL offers a different-but solid-language experience.
3. For years, students at Ohio State have inquired about and lobbied for such courses in order to have the option to take ASL for their GEC foreign language requirement; this program meets that student demand.
4. The central Ohio Deaf community is one of the largest, longest, and strongest in the nation; the Columbus Speech and Hearing Center documents the central Ohio deaf/hard-of-hearing population at just over 100,000 (although admittedly not all of these are sign language users).
5. ASL is a true and natural language that has lately been shedding significant light on research around language development, in sociolinguistics, and in cross-cultural communication.

ASL GEC Series

The ASL program at Ohio State is unlike any other ASL sequence in the country because it involves contributions from three Colleges with each College providing a unique perspective. The three participating Colleges/Departments are: Education, Humanities (Department of English) and Social and Behavioral Sciences (Department of Speech and Hearing Science). The Ohio State University is among a growing number of colleges and universities to view American Sign Language as a "foreign language" that fulfills second language General Education Credit (GEC) requirements.

Because of current issues surrounding deafness and deaf/hard-of-hearing students in education (whether mainonecolumnstreamed or not), and the long history of deaf education developing in tandem with larger American values in our history, ASL instruction plays an important role in the College of Education. Young children who are not deaf have also been shown to greatly benefit from the use of sign language (in research done right here at Ohio State). Both deaf/hard-of-hearing and hearing students alike would benefit if all teachers in public schools knew some ASL.

Questions about the ASL GEC series?

Contact Emily LeGros or Tia Jones. More information about the ASL program at The Ohio State University can be found at www.asl.osu.edu

ASL Links

• OSU's American Sign Language Program (sister website of this site)
• deafe.org - Home page of Deaf Empowerment. They have a great resources page with links to all sorts of useful stuff. Very comprehensive.
• deaflibrary.org - Information about ASL linguistics, ASL's status as a foreign language, ASL dictionaries, and other ASL resources.
• bu.edu- The American Sign Language Linguistic Research Project at Boston University
• nidcd.nih.gov - National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (part of the National Institute of Health)
• aslinfo.com - General site with ASL information.
• Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon
• Good General Info
• National Technical Institute for the Deaf has a search engine/index that's really handy for finding info on ASL, Deaf culture, etc.