[EDLING:569] 'Sign language classes are on the rise'

[Francis M Hult]

The Boston Globe

'Sign language classes are on the rise'

By Stuart Silverstein, Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/23/sign_language_classes_are_on_the_rise/

LOS ANGELES -- Enrollments have soared in American Sign Language classes at
colleges around the United States, but many of the students are not
planning to become sign language interpreters or teachers for the deaf.

Instead, they are looking for a way to avoid taking Spanish, French, or
another spoken language.

"I thought, 'Cool, you can talk with your hands,' " said Marisol Arzate, a
student at Pierce College in Los Angeles.

Arzate, 20, who earns A's and B's in community college, had struggled in
high school Spanish classes despite learning the basics from her
Mexican-born parents. When she registered at Pierce for her first semester
of American Sign Language, Arzate said, her hunch was: "This should be
easy. No big deal."

These days Arzate warns that ASL is tough to master, and so do many others
with normal hearing who have studied the language. Still, it is attracting
many students who prefer to learn visually and who attend, or plan to
enroll at, schools that approve ASL for meeting language requirements.

So many students have discovered ASL in recent years that it recorded the
fastest enrollment growth rate of any so-called foreign language offered on
US college campuses, according to the Modern Language Association. The
group says ASL is now the fifth most widely studied foreign language in
college, trailing Spanish, French, German, and Italian.

Academic leaders are divided on the educational merits. Although the list
of colleges approving ASL for foreign-language entrance or graduation
requirements keeps growing, some prominent schools, including the
University of Southern California, are holdouts. They say ASL -- unlike
French, for example -- does not open a window into another country's
culture.

The debate has not dampened students' enthusiasm. Among those pushing up
enrollment are ambitious high school students who flock to community
colleges for ASL classes because they are not offered at their high
schools. Many want a different way to earn language credits for their
college applications.

"Spoken language really is not my big, strong suit," said Sterling Hirsh,
15, a sophomore at North Hollywood High School's magnet program for gifted
students who studies ASL at Glendale Community College.

He credits his success in ASL partly to teacher Lisa Chahayed, an
instructor at Glendale and Pierce. Chahayed, 41, who has been deaf since
birth, runs a fast-paced class, with animated give-and-take, communicated
through gestures and signs. The classroom quiet -- there is no speaking --
is shattered every few minutes by the laughter she draws from students with
lighthearted role-playing.

Many of Chahayed's students had no ties to the deaf community before
studying ASL and have no specific plans to use the language professionally.
But she is optimistic that students will leave the course with "a brand-new
outlook on life and that they appreciate us for who we are and how much we
go through."

The origins of American Sign Language are traced at least to the late
1600s, when a form of sign language was used by the deaf community on
Martha's Vineyard.

The language moved closer to its current form in the early 1800s when a
Protestant minister -- Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, for whom Gallaudet
University in Washington, D.C., is named -- helped establish a Connecticut
school for the deaf.

Today, it is estimated that ASL is the primary language for as many as
500,000 people.

Academics have widely recognized ASL as a full-fledged language with
complex grammar. It relies on arm and hand movements as well as body
posture and facial expressions. Although deaf people sometimes sprinkle
English into conversations by finger-spelling words, ASL has a distinct
vocabulary. One dictionary lists more than 7,000 entries.

Linguists overwhelmingly dismiss the notion that ASL is easy to learn,
although it lacks a written literature and comes more quickly to some
students than spoken languages.

Boston University, which rejected ASL as a foreign language in 1994, is at
the center of the debate. Its College of Arts and Sciences is reviewing the
matter again.

Jeffrey Henderson, Boston University's dean of arts and sciences, said his
college's current requirement "doesn't aim only for students to achieve a
certain competence in a language but also [to learn] a language that
provides access to the culture of another society. That's what's under
debate because ASL is a North American language."