| American Sign Language (ASL) is the third most used language in North America and the fourth most studied foreign language in colleges and universities in the United States. There is research linked to hearing babies and children who use ASL, but none related to older students who enroll in ASL classes voluntarily. This study provides a look into the experiences of hearing, regular education students who have taken a beginner or intermediate ASL class. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the limited amount of literature and research on ASL and hearing people in order to provide some insight on why hearing students are choosing ASL as their second language, as well as describe how they felt about the experiences from ASL class during or after their studies. This is a basic, qualitative design using interviews as the means for data collection. The theoretical context of this study is based on second-language acquisition, constructivism, differentiated instruction, and multiple intelligences theory. The overarching research question asks: what are the experiences of ASL students? The other research questions ask how ASL affects academics, how the ASL experience affects self-efficacy, why the students chose ASL to fulfill their foreign language requirement, what the experience was of acquiring the language, and how multiple intelligences or learning styles were used, developed, or challenged. The population from which the sample was pulled is hearing, regular education students who are traditional college aged, who have taken an ASL class from a Louisiana high school or college in the past five years. The sample population consists of eight participants who fit the criteria. This study aims to lend insight into the world of ASL instruction as it pertains to hearing secondary or post-secondary students. |
