Argumentative Essay On American Sign Language

Mary McVay
Jenkins
American Literature
27 April 2018
To Language or not To Language
In life, there will always be people who we can not talk to. Whether it be because they do not speak our language or because of some other barrier, this is just a fact of life. However, for those who are deaf or hard of hearing within the United States, it is exponentially harder to find people who are able to understand and talk to them. This can leave them with a sense of isolation that can only be healed if someone takes hold of the tools needed to speak to those who are deaf. This tool is American Sign Language. American Sign Language should be a language offered in schools like any other foreign language due to the improved ability to communicate with others,
It is thought that if the language is not taught and maintained on a daily basis, the skill will not be maintained well enough to achieve fluency or even retain enough of the language to make the foreign language class worthwhile. It has been found that the prime years for language learning and retention are between zero and three years old, as Patricia Kuhl found when she worked on a study involving a group of children learning english in Madrid. It was found that by being exposed to english for an hour each day, the children in this specialized track Kuhl observed learned English much faster than the children in the normal Madrid language program. (Bach 1) This study showed that the first year of development is in fact extremely important to learning a second language, as once the one year marker is passed the child will start to have a more complex grasp of their mother language. However, if they are raised in a bilingual household, or are given constant attention towards learning another language, both languages will develop simultaneously. This would be the same in American Sign Language, as when children grow up in deaf or hard of hearing households where the primary language is sign language, they will go through their babbling stage signing nonsense instead of speaking nonsense syllables. The primary age for retention and learning of languages,
Fluency in American Sign Language give people the ability to communicate with everyone from those who are hearing, hard of hearing, or deaf. This leads to an ease of communication with those who they would otherwise not be able to easily speak with. This can lead to those who are deaf or hard of hearing being included in groups where they would otherwise not be included, or even to simply go to the store and talk to cashiers and clerks.(Lead With Languages). In one study done in a first and second grade combined classroom, it was shown that children that were taught some sign language every day were eventually able to communicate with each other, as well as teach some signs to others that they encountered. They were also shown to use the sign language they acquired during the school day outside of school, usually when talking with their parents. At the end of the study, students admitted to finding learning sign language and communicating with each other fun. This shows how easy it would be to implement sign language as a class in school, due to the ease of which students were able to pick up on the language.(Lack). Studying sign language also gives those who are hearing a look into the lives of those who are deaf and hard of hearing, giving any potential class a cultural basis to it as well, much like other foreign language courses. This means that sign language has its own set of