ASL: Access, Benefits, and Quality
Rosen
related to ASL needs improvement. Deaf people as a group are known for being signers over the years, but their knowledge about their own language, ASL is frequently limited. The situation of hearing students who are themselves excluded from enrolling in a school for the deaf and thus miss the opportunity for immersion in ASL has ramifications as well. Only recently has Gallaudet University opened its enrollment to hearing undergraduates( Behm, 2010; de Vise, 2011). Along with the needed changes to how deaf education is set up, such changes point to future directions for educators and policymakers.
Closing Remarks
This review of studies on access to, benefits of, and delivery quality in ASL reveal areas of accomplishments, concerns and promise. There is access to ASL in the American education system that can be improved in various areas. With remarkably rapid growth, offering ASL programs and classes serves as a testament to both the efforts of members of the deaf community and society’ s increasing acceptance for sign language as a human language. What needs to be addressed in the future is the prospect of all hearing students having the opportunity to learn ASL, and not just for meeting the foreign language requirement. This would be part of fulfilling a universal design concept, where an entire society knows and communicates via an alternative language system such as ASL( S. Supalla, Small, & J. S. Cripps, 2013). The idea that all hearing students study ASL as they do English, math, science, and social studies is bold, yet beneficial. Future studies should examine how learning ASL shapes the architecture of spatial working memory within and outside the linguistic domain among hearing learners and users. Any cognitive boost for hearing learners, as was reported for deaf learners, would be welcome in a society that supports stronger cognitive functioning for its citizens, for instance.
What must be recognized here is the disparity between hearing and deaf children in language development. The former are experiencing increasing access to ASL, while the latter continue to suffer from a lack of attention to sign language-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment and the persistence of spoken language bias in education and society. The polarity and social injustice as described here should not be tolerated. ASL owes its origins to deaf people themselves, but society must be held accountable for its signing citizens and be fully supportive of sign language. This requires sign language planning that ensures benefits and successful outcomes for all American citizens. Both L1 and L2 / Ln considerations and the professionalization of sign language education, are crucial to such planning. This will occur when inclusiveness and diversity are accepted practices in society so that deaf people are recognized as a part of the variegation of human life, and ASL as a natural, human language.
References
Ausbrooks, M.( 2007). Predictors of reading success among deaf bilinguals: Examining the relationship between American Sign Language and English. Unpublished manuscript, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX.
Bahan, B., & Poole-Nash, J. C.( 1996). The formation of signing communities. In V. Walter( Ed.), Deaf studies IV: Visions of the past, visions for the future( pp. 1-26). Washington, DC: College for Continuing Education, Gallaudet University.
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