I took ASL 110 my second semester of my freshman year at Longwood. I was so excited for this class, because I have always wanted to learn sign language and be able to speak it fluently so I could one day teach my students if they were nonverbal, and this class was a great stepping stone to begin using sign language.
This class was an interesting class, and different than what I expected it to be. Just like another foreign language class, ASL has its own grammatical structure and vocabulary that doesn’t always translate exactly to English. It also has its own culture surrounding people who are deaf, so this class taught me all new things about ASL other than just how to sign. This class taught me that ASL is an independent language; it’s culture, grammatical structure, and independence from English should all be respected and treated as any other language.
Below I have included a paper that I wrote for the class about the difference in ASL and other signing forms and how it has affected ASL.