University students are learning that seeing is believing.
 
Two different University courses, COMD 2051 and LING/ENG 4310, teach students sign language.
The sign language is divided into two categories. Manual sign language, concerned more with terminology, is taught in Communication Disorders 2051.
“You don’t learn the grammar, you just learn the vocabulary,” said Wendy Jumonville, instructor for COMD 2051.
Linguistics 4310, studies in language, is more focused on the grammar and culture of the deaf community, much like a typical foreign language course.
Jumonville said there are generally two types of students who take her course. Some do it out of necessity for their future careers in dealing with people with communication disorders, and others are students of various majors who have interacted with deaf people and want to learn basic communication skills.
Director of Disability Services Benjamin Cornwell said there are 22 registered University students who are classified as deaf or hard-of-hearing.
He said the procedure for these students to get interpreters or note-takers for a class is the same as any other disability. Students must present Disability Services with documentation confirming their disability, which must then be reviewed.
He said there are currently deaf students who need either an interpreter or a note-taker for each class they take.
American Sign Language is slightly different than manual sign language and is made up of its own grammar and rules.
Students in Mona Alkadi’s LING 4310 class learn ASL once a week and are taught about deaf culture the rest of the class time.
“In this class, the focus is ‘Yes, we’re learning ASL,’ but we’re also looking at the grammar, the phenology,” she said, adding that students also learn the morphology, meaning and syntax of words.
Student response to the sign language courses on campus has been strong.
Jumonville, who offers her course every fall, said the 50-person class is always full.
Alkadi said her class also sees strong student turnout and said she’d have no problem filling more spots in her course if she could afford to teach a bigger size.
Due to the student interaction the course requires, Alkadi said she must limit her numbers.
Students in her class said they enjoyed learning the language and culture.
Communication disorders sophomore Nicki Klimacek said she took the class because it related to her major, but it also hits close to home for her.
“My mom is going deaf, but I’d like to learn it for her,” she said.
This is the case for many students who take the sign language course.
Jumonville said students in her class usually have a deaf family member or friend, or they must deal with deaf patrons for their jobs.
NiTyjah Thigpen, linguistics graduate student, said ASL is the fourth language she’s learned.
Klimacek and Thigpen said the course opened their eyes to the similarities and differences between ASL and the English language.
“It’s a very gestural, expressive language,” said Thigpen, who emphasized the use of facial expressions when communicating using ASL.
“The wrong facial expression gives the wrong message,” she said.
Klimacek said the smallest gestures, even the movement of an eyebrow, are different between English and ASL.
She said if a person asks in English, “Hey, are you going to the movies?” his or her eyebrows are usually raised, but in ASL, whenever someone asks a question about a destination, the eyebrows furrow and go downward.
Thigpen also said in ASL, gestures are viewed as a whole and not by the individual letters.
In English, people will notice the letters in “cat” separately as “c-a-t,” but in ASL, the whole word is seen at once.
 
While the students have had a positive response to the classes, Alkadi’s course won’t be offered next semester and she said she isn’t sure if it will be again.
Although she said ASL has become more accepted as its own language in recent years, education of it is still falling behind.
“They’re still fighting, not at a linguistic level, but at an educational level,” Alkadi said.
She said other universities offer sign language as a foreign language credit.
But Jumonville said the University doesn’t have the faculty to offer American sign language as a degree.
“It still has that negative view of a lesser language,” Alkadi said.