ASL Foundations Digital Badge

Contact Information

The ASL Foundations digital badge is a competency-based microcredential offered through the Department of Modern Languages. Earning this badge demonstrates foundational competency in American Sign Language (ASL), a comprehensive understanding of Deaf culture, effective interpersonal communication with the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community, and a deeper understanding of the linguistic landscape in the United States. While this microcredential does not prepare students adequately to become ASL interpreters, it is an important first step for students on this journey. Competencies for this microcredential are aligned with American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACFTL) standards for proficiency in the areas of interpersonal, presentational, and interpretive communication.

Earning Criteria

Participants earning this badge are required to develop and demonstrate their signing skills in several ASL courses, expand their vocabulary of signs, narrate a story using signs, submit presentations and papers related to research in American Deaf culture, and practice using their signing skills outside of the classroom. 

Compentencies Demonstrated

1. Successfully manage straightforward communication tasks in social and transactional situations using signs correctly.
2. Request and convey information through the accurate use of shape, placement, and movement of the hands, as well as facial expressions and body movements.   
3. Transmit communicative intent with sufficient accuracy, clarity, and precision to convey an intended message without misrepresentation or confusion. 
4. Communicate about topics related to matters of broad interest and approach common interactions by using connected, paragraph-level discourse.
5. Convey the main facts in a conventional narrative and most supporting details in a descriptive text by using familiar patterns and expressing past, present, and future events.