American Sign Language (ASL) Program Overview
The American Sign Language (ASL) program teaches the primary language of the Deaf community in the U.S. and Canada, offering students insight into its unique structure and rich cultural heritage. By studying ASL, students gain a deeper understanding of language diversity, enhance their career prospects in fields related to deafness, and develop a new perspective on language as a whole.
Courses & Requirements | Highlights | Faculty
Requirements
ASL cannot be used to satisfy the RC language requirement.
RCASL 100 is a prerequisite for all ASL courses in the RC.
The ASL Program at Michigan
The Residential College offers a 5-course sequence in American Sign Language. Introduction to Deaf Culture (RCASL 100) serves as a pre- or co-requisite to beginning the language courses. The fourth semester language course (RCASL 202) may be used to fulfill the undergraduate language requirement of the College of Literature, Science, and Arts.
RCASL 100: Introduction to Deaf Culture
RCASL 101 and 102: Elementary American Sign Language
RCASL 201 and 202: Intermediate American Sign Language
Advising for ASL
Paula Berwanger is the primary instructor and head of the ASL Program.
Why study American Sign Language?
American Sign Language (ASL) is the language of the Deaf community in the United States and much of Canada. ASL uses a gestural-visual modality in which manual signs, facial expressions, and body movements and postures all convey complex linguistic information. It is a fully developed language, with its own systems for articulation, forming words and sentences, and meaning. ASL is separate from English, and is also distinct from other signed languages. An excellent example of the separateness of signed languages from each other and from the surrounding spoken language(s) is that, although English is the shared spoken language of the U.S. and Britain, speakers of ASL do not understand speakers of British Sign Language.
ASL is estimated to be the fourth most commonly used language in the U.S. Through learning the preferred language of the Deaf community, students who study ASL gain access to the rich cultural heritage of that community, which includes a distinguished tradition of visual poetry, narrative, and theater. Students of ASL also learn about other aspects of American Deaf culture, including the values and outlooks of Deaf people, and social and educational aspects of deafness.
Students of ASL may find that they gain a new perspective on how human languages are structured. Through learning a language that uses a different modality of expression than the oral-auditory modality of spoken languages, students begin to discover properties that are common to all languages. Linguists' research on the commonalities between signed and spoken language provides strong evidence that all languages are governed by the same basic properties.
Finally, study of ASL also provides practical training for students entering a range of professions in the field of deafness, and may strengthen students' qualifications for various non-deafness careers.
