This course covers the beginning level of Turkish Sign Language (TSL). It is designed to assist the students in obtaining a basic knowledge of TSL and deaf culture. The content includes the basic receptive and expressive sign skills and sign vocabulary, grammatical structure, facial expressions and body language to be able to handle everyday communication with the deaf people at a beginner's level in TSL. 

Course Objectives:

-Be able to handle basic everyday communication with Turkish Sign Language: exchanging information, beginning with exchanging names and moving to talking about one's background; identifying others; making requests; giving reasons; giving opinions; giving simple directions, topics center around personal information and the immediate environment, developing asking and answering skills.

-Getting to know more about deaf community and deaf culture

-Raising awareness on social inclusion of deaf people into society

Expected Learning Outcomes:

1. Demonstrate competency in fingerspelling by utilizing the proper formation of the alphabet to spell words clearly and to recognize those words fingerspelled

2. Converse on a basic level on topics such as school, family, friends, home, professions,..etc.

3. Recognize and incorporate specific features of the signing utilizing parameters of TSL such as hand shape, movement, location and palm orientation

4. Recognize and incorporate non-manual signals such as body language and grammatical facial expressions

5. Properly implement Deaf behaviors and norms while conversing with native users of the language

6. Appreciate the unique linguistic relationship between language and culture in sign language

7. Understand and analyze basic grammatical principals of TSL such as subject, verb, object sentences structure

8. Compare and contrast between various linguistic aspects of signed versus spoken language in general and between TSL and Turkish in particular