Sign language: national differences, role in education?

Sign Language : National Differences , and its Role in Education

Sign Language : National Differences , and its Role in Education

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Sign Language : National Differences , and its Role in Education

Introduction

Sign language is the art of communication using hand movements and other conventionally accepted gestures . Conventional , simply because a gesture is an arbitrary agreed sign in the manner of communication with hands movement followed by body mimics and various facial expressions . Sign language is diverse and rich in expressing the same span of feelings thoughts , complexities and intentions as

the spoken language , and has existed since time immemorial , gradually changing alongside spoken languages . The gesture and hands movements ' are pre-cursors to speech and are used to symbolize something and eventually pointing to the speech expression . There are over one hundred sign languages in the world today (Baker Woll 2008 . In North America , the American Sign Language is mostly used by the majority of the culturally Deaf and involves conventional shapes and movements of the arms and hands , head facial expressions and body posture . It is the fourth language in the United States that is commonly used . Like the spoken language , sign language is a visual language that encompasses its own semantics and grammatical rules . In America , many educational institutions have embraced the American Sign Language (ASL ) in their curriculum and offer it as a foreign language (Branson Miller 2002

Types of Sign Languages

There are three categories of sign languages namely Deaf Sign Languages , Artificial or the Code Systems and...