Rationale and Strategies for American Sign Language Intervention

A Midwest school district established a demonstration Total Communication Project. Its goal was for teachers to become consistent in their role modeling of English and American Sign Language (ASL). English was the primary language of the classroom and ASL was used as an intervention tool. There has been little research on the effectiveness of ASL in the classroom. By implementing an ASL intervention program this project is a first step in establishing an environment conducive to investigating the effectiveness of ASL intervention for teaching deaf students. This paper describes: (a) techniques used for identifying classroom situations that call for the use of ASL; (b) discourse situations that influence the use of different language codes in total communication classrooms; and (c) guidelines for code-switching between English and ASL.