Welcome to the ASL Online Tutorial
Welcome to the ASL Online Tutorial designed
by the American Sign Language Program of the Department of
Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin.
This site is an initiative of Franky Ramont, Lisa Bosson,
and Richard P. Meier, in the ASL Program of UT's Department
of Linguistics. We have received assistance from the Center
for Instructional Technologies and from Liberal Arts Instuctional
Technology Services. Our site contains an archive of videos
demonstrating basic vocabulary and sentence structure of American
Sign Language (ASL). These videos are organized into 12 units,
reflecting the structure of our textbook, Signing Naturally
(Dawn Sign Press). Within each unit, video clips of signs
and sentences are further organized into categories, such
as numbers, verbs, pronouns, or yes-no questions.
Goals:
This site is not a dictionary of ASL. Instead, we seek to
present the signs and sentence types that are important to
each unit in our textbook. We hope that using this site will
help you to remember, recognize, and produce the signs that
we are using in the classroom. This site is a resource that
supplements classroom instruction, lab activities, homework,
and other assignments that are part of ASL 506. We also think
that consulting this site may be a useful review for the second-semester
course, ASL 507.
In many instances, the site will display two or three signs
that have roughly the same meaning. For example, in Unit 2,
we present three signs that correspond to the English word
“freshman”. Just as in English, there are regional
and generational differences in the vocabulary of ASL. For
example, many of you may use the slang term fish for a freshman;
in contrast, many—perhaps most—of UT’s faculty
are unaware of this usage. In this site, we have tried to
display some of the variant signs that you will see in use
at UT and in the wider Austin community. Knowing a language
requires you to be able to understand more than just one speaker
or signer.
Although this site focuses most on the vocabulary of ASL,
we hope that it will also reinforce your knowledge of the
sentence structure of ASL. For example, we have tried to present
clear examples of the facial expressions (“non-manual
behaviors”) that are syntactic markers of different
sentence types in ASL Beginning already in Unit 1, we present
videos that show the distinct facial expressions used in yes-no
questions (e.g., English “Are you taking ASL at UT?”)
versus wh-questions (e.g., English “Why aren’t
you taking ASL at UT?).
For your information:
We're still working on the construction of ASL Online as a
long-term tool for students. As this site is in its infancy,
having only being launched in Summer 2004, we are still working
on its completion. Our long-term goal is include materials
pertinent to all four semesters in the ASL curriculum.
Contact:
Please feel free to send email containing positive or negative
feedback or offering suggestions as to how to improve this
site to Franky Ramont, ASL Online Designer at franky-ramont@mail.utexas.edu
Enjoy yourself at ASL Online!
Department of Linguistics
ASL program
Calhoun 307 - B5100
Austin, Texas 78712-1196