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South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington announces it’s ESL for ASL class: an English course specially designed for students with ASL (American Sign Language) as their mother tongue.

 

Over the past years, our ESL teachers have seen more and more progress in Deaf students who had the benefits of studying English at the grassroots level, filling in the “gaps” in their reading and writing which may have followed them through many years of public school. In 2005, we launched our very successful first ESL class specifically for Deaf students, who now have the benefit of working on only the skills they most often need: grammar, rules of writing, reading comprehension and vocabulary development. An experienced, signing ESL instructor, as well as a qualified interpreter, will team-teach the classes, using comparisons and contrasts with ASL structure which provide clarification, and a solid foundation.

 

The course has been extremely popular with Deaf students, who now can address the issues they always wanted to cover in class, with teachers sensitive to their special language needs in every class session.

 

“We have never seen this kind of enthusiasm and success in an ESL class,” claims Dean of Developmental Education Crystal Ashley-duVerglas, at SPSCC. “The students are suddenly excited about these new-found windows to good writing, being better students, and their future possibilities. Many of them never even enjoyed reading and writing before, but now they’ve come alive! ”

 

The classes will begin again Monday Sept. 18, and continue through Dec. 1, 2006

Cost: $25 for fall quarter

Schedule: Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:15 to 4:50 pm.

How to register: Show up for the class, enrollment is ongoing: intake will be at that session.

For more information: cashley@spscc.ctc.edu  or call 360/596-5504