Critical thinking concepts and applications

American Sign Language

As an American Sign Language tutor, I have long been aware of the importance of communication as an instructor. ASL is powerful communication system in and of itself. To teach others how to use the power of ASL and to find their 'voice' in this mode of expression is tremendously gratifying. But sadly, as an instructor of other ASL teachers and tutors, I have often found myself disappointed at the quality of their teaching skills as well as their understanding of the language. Having bad teacher in a new language means that a student often fails to understand the basic concepts of the language, and makes it almost impossible to build upon a core framework of knowledge.

From my experience, I have often found the quality of ASL instruction to vary widely, as I have found ASL students or prospective tutors often come to the lab where I work lack the basic skills and concepts necessary for them to become certified as teachers or tutors of the hearing impaired. I feel I must blame not these students, but the instructors who imperfectly transmitted the basic of ASL to them in the classroom, as when I prompt them to explain how they were taught, I find that their classes often teach by rote, rather than encourage them to participate and innovate in the language. The reason I am pursuing my M.S. In Adult Education is to become not simply a better teacher, but a teacher of future teachers of ASL. I am interested in exploring the differences in teaching both hearing impaired and hearing instructors of ASL. By striving to improve the quality of the teaching of future instructors, I hope to improve the quality of instruction of this communication system in the future.

As an ASL tutor, you should be capable and have confidence on what has to be taught and in which way. The mood of the teacher should be in a teaching mode and have good communication skills. Not everyone can do this. As an ASL tutor I should have professional skills. I have seen that many teachers just understand what they are teaching themselves. If the student is have looking confused, they never bother asking them. I think the student should be confident enough to give a quick reply. I believe the student should be relaxed with the teacher and free to say anything he/she desires. I would say that it is the tutors fault if a student is like this.

I want to be an excellent ASL tutor. I would make a student feel free to communicate with me. ASL involves a lot of the use of language. I believe ASL is a natural language which satisfies the linguistic society. If in my class a deaf student is incapable of communicating with the society then I would love to be much closer to him so he/she could at least communicate everything to me.

I am going to teach the student how to use their hands the most. An ASL tutor must know all the sign languages. A tutor of ASL should teach a student finger spelling with the help of English. I will teach the ASL student the alphabets and then go in the depth of each word. Each word will have its individual sign. I have found that ASL also has classifiers which will be specified as signs. A very amazing thing about ASL is that there is no grammatical tense in it. The verbal identification should be recognized.