- This event has passed.
Auslan Level 1 – Night Class (Thursday)
February 3, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
$30.00 – $225.00Content:
Level 1 focuses on the basics, introducing you to Auslan, fingerspelling, numbers, Deaf culture and community, and the beginning of grammar and sentence structure. By the end of Level 1, you will be able to have short conversations, introduce yourselves and tell us about your family and friends, understand short monologues, ask questions, and will be gradually adding to your vocabulary bank.
Classes are interactive, fun, engaging, with lots of hands-on activities to help you learn, practice, revise, and retain new knowledge.
Class sizes are capped at 10 students so there is plenty of opportunity for individual feedback and support.
Level 1 is run over 9 weeks at 1.5 hours per week.
You will cover:
Focus on Fingerspelling
- Orientation of hands
- A – Z
- Responding to questions with fingerspelling
- Double letter words
- Expressive and receptive skills
- Fingerspelling patterns –ing, -ious, -ion, -ck
- Reading fingerspelling and improving fluency
- Assessment and correction of articulation
Navigating Numbers
- 0 – 100
- Thousands
- Millions
- Billions
- All cardinal numbers
- Lists and order
- Incorporation of numbers into age, time, timelines, pronouns and more
Culture Close-Up
- History of Auslan
- Similarities and differences between different signed languages internationally
- Types of signing
- The role of fingerspelling
- Variation in Auslan signs around Australia
- Communicating with Deaf people
- Lipreading challenges
- Terminology
- Deaf identity
- Gaining a Deaf person’s attention
- Clapping
- Physical proximity
- Eye contact
- Deaf introductions
- The long goodbye
- The round table
- Kitchen/lighting, noise
- Directness/bluntness
- Sign names
- Technology for the Deaf including:
- Hearing assistive technologies
- Deaf adaptive technologies (visual alerting devices, auditory to text conversion, English/Auslan translation/interpreting), and
- Deaf-friendly technology
- Deaf World inc Deaf organisations, Deaf groups, Deaf arts, Deaf sports, Deaf education, Deaf business
- How to connect with the Deaf community
- Opportunities for further Auslan learning
Grammar Guidance
- Questions v statements
- Classifiers/depicting signs:
- Proform
- Descriptive (SASS – size and shape specifiers)
- Close/distant focus (surrogate vs token space)
- HOLME – Handshape, Orientation, Location, Movement, Expression
- Basic grammatical structure and syntax
- Topicalisation
- Rhetorical questions
- Pronouns, possessive pronouns, multiple pronouns
- Negation and affirmation
- Agreement and disagreement
- Answering questions with a verb
- Directional verbs
- Number of referents/participants
- Adverbs and auxiliary verbs
- Inflection – manner, intensification, and mood
- Sentence reconfiguration – English to Auslan
Vital Vocab
- Greetings and introductions
- Question words
- Family/relationships
- Health industry
- Double letters
- Timelines
- Colours
- Verbs
- Emotions
Each week, you will receive handouts with further information pertaining to that which has been covered in class, particularly around aspects of culture and grammar. You will also receive a weekly summary of all that was covered and a list of vocab that will be taught the following week.
Upon completion of Level 1, you will receive a certificate of completion and be ready to progress to Level 2.