American Sign Language Beginner 4

Formerly Sign Language Intermediate 1.

Advance your grammar and understanding of sentence structure in American Sign Language Beginner 4. Learn about agreement verbs, how to ask if something is done, and how to tell how often. Practise and learn signs for talking about everyday activities, chores, extended family and what one does for a living.

In Beginner 4, you learn how to tell a second ASL story – The Gum Story – about a boy and his sticky piece of gum.

This course covers unit 5 of Signing Naturally 1–6, which can be ordered from the UBC Bookstore.

Course outline

Signing Naturally 1–6, Unit 5:

• Talking about everyday activities
• Agreement verbs
• Fingerspelling word with G and H
• Talking about chores
• Asking if done
• Talking about extended family
• Telling how often
• Talking about activities with others
• Talking about what one does for a living
• “The Gum” story

Textbook

This course requires the purchase of Signing Naturally 1–6, which can be ordered from the UBC Bookstore. This course covers unit 5.

How am I assessed?

This is a non-credit course without letter or numerical grades. You receive feedback on your sign language skills from your instructor during class, and on homework you complete outside of class. At the end of the course, you prepare and sign a short presentation to demonstrate that you’ve learned the required skills to move on to the next level.

Record of completion

A record of completion will be emailed to students who participate and satisfy the course requirements within two weeks of the course end date. Course completion means 80% attendance and/or 80% completion of mandatory assignments.

Expected effort

Outside of class time, you should allow one to two hours per week to practise signing, complete homework and textbook exercises, watch and record videos, and prepare presentations.

Technology requirements

To take this course, you’ll need access to:

• an email account
• a computer, laptop or tablet under five years old and using Windows or Mac OS
• the latest version of a web browser (or previous major version release)
• a reliable internet connection
• a video camera

One day before the start of your course, we’ll email you step-by-step instructions for accessing your course.

Course format

This course is 100% online, and is instructor-supported with real-time classes.

All of our ASL classes are taught by Deaf instructors experienced in teaching hearing and hard of hearing students. Spoken English is not used in class. Our instructors use ASL, gestures, slides and occasional written English (in the Zoom chat or on white boards in class) to support and help you learn to communicate confidently and comfortably in ASL. You'll also quickly learn signs to show understanding, to ask for clarification, and to ask your instructor to repeat something.

For your live virtual classes, you log in to your class at scheduled times and participate by video with Zoom, a web conferencing app. For a virtual ASL classroom to be successful, we require you to turn on your video, and join from a place where you won't be disturbed and can remain for the entire class. Moving around can be distracting for your classmates and instructor, and make it difficult for you to participate.

Outside of class time, you can access other materials online at your own pace and rhythm. Please note you can log in to your course for up to three weeks after the course ends. You'll no longer be able to access course materials in Canvas after this time.