For individuals: Students may register as an individual and join our regular classes and complete Levels 1, 2 and 3. Students registered in the Scholars Institute will receive grades for each assessment. There is a final exam and students receive their final grade for all their work. It is 56 hours of classroom time in total.
Cost: $525.00 for the whole program - paid in full or $175.00 paid when registering for each Level. There are no refunds issued after attendance at the first class. All materials are provided.
For schools wanting an ASL Scholars Institute course at your school for up to 14 students, the cost is $4,320.00 for the 56 hour program. Check for availability.
Classes will be conducted via Zoom.
Course Content for Levels 1 - 3:
Level 1
18 hours of learning which will include:
The manual alphabet - fingerspelling
Numbers 1-99
Colors
Animals
Food and Drink
Family
Verbs
Feelings
Professions
Spatial referencing
Other key vocabulary
Two Portraits in Print - biographies of two individuals who had important contributions to the development of American Sign Language and the Deaf educational system in America
Level 2
18 hours of learning to include:
A review of Level 1 vocabulary
The pronoun system
Time and tense markers
Countries
Negation
Five sentence structures in ASL
How to ask Yes/No questions
How to ask Wh questions
Two Portraits in Print
Level 3
20 hours of learning to include:
Question asking with a focus on accurate facial expression
Contrastive Structure - a foundation of the ASL pronoun system
Expanded vocabulary
More Spatial Referencing - part of the ASL pronoun system
Two Portraits in Print
Final Exam
What the ASL Scholars Institute will do:
Students will gain a solid foundation in the skills they will need to go on to mastery in the language. They will be taught the approximately 55 handshapes (chiremes) that make up all signs in the language. They will be taught the four parameters that make up any sign in the language. They will be taught the three types of signs that make up the language. They will learn five of the eight primary sentence structures of the language. They will learn the role of facial expressions that convey primary linguistic information.
Learning a new language, especially one outside the language group of the native language of the students, is a complex task. It takes many hundreds of classroom hours to accomplish, along with practice in real-world settings with fluent users of that language. This fifty-six hour Institute will give students clear guidance and a strong foundation that will prepare them to continue progressing if they decide to continue.
Students will be graded using the assessments listed in the course description above. At the completion of Levels 1 through 3, a final exam of receptive skills (up to 2 hours) will be administered and then a final grade will be determined.
What the ASL Scholars Institute will not do:
We are not authorized to issue credits. Your high school may offer you credits for the Institute if they deem it appropriate in fulfilling their requirements.
This will not guarantee any particular placement in a college language program. Colleges have their own intake evaluations to determine which level of their courses you are eligible to take. We are confident that if you do well in the Institute, you will be placed as a second semester student or higher in a college program.
Who is eligible for the ASL Scholars Institute?
Any high school student.
Registration: Is open anytime through our website. Go to our registration page. Use the drop down window and enter your payment and you will be registered. You will receive a confirmation of your payment and registration.
For high school students considering the ASL Scholars Institute:
You are in for an exciting and rich learning experience! I am the founder and program director, Manuel Martin. I designed the ASL program used here at ASL Institute and designed a program that is now a minor at a local university. I have taught many workshops and Institutes in a number of states and countries and an American Indian reservation in the U.S. The ASL Institute draws students from all over the U.S. (a total of 22 states so far), and Canada.
The classroom learning is done at your pace. You will quickly gain confidence in your knowledge and after the first of the three levels is complete, you will be able to have a conversation of 15 or 20 minutes, talking about family, travel, food, animals, where you live, many of your likes and dislikes and much more! Our language teaching approach is unique and has a proven record of success. We have taught many beginners who continued with our program until they became fluent. A number of those former students are now interpreters, teachers of the deaf, or working in a field with Deaf consumers.
Learning a new language is challenging. Our curriculum was created by me, and is specifically designed for second language learners who are new to learning a visual, spatial, three-dimensional moving language.