University American Sign Language Learners: Self-Awareness and Error Analysis within a Narrative Context

Abstract:Second-language learners of American Sign Language (ASL) often struggle in the acquisition of more complex ASL aspects, such as role shift, constructed action, and eye gaze to represent characters and their actions with narratives. These learners also often overestimate their ASL skill level. This study investigated errors in second modality, second language (M2L2) university learners' ASL narrative retellings through rating comparisons (i.e., agreements and disagreements) between learners themselves and their instructor. Learners engaged in repeated viewings of ASL models of two Signing Naturally stories, Timber and Gum, paired with instructor analysis, modeling, and feedback on learners' productions within a sociocultural framework. Learners' self-evaluations were compared to instructor evaluations using an itemized list of narrative episode details and options for how they were produced to identify where these evaluations were in agreement or not. Overall agreement was high (i.e., M = 92%), however, agreement across specific ASL aspects, including role shift, constructed action, and accurate sign production, varied to a greater extent (i.e., 89–94%). Two types of disagreements occurred: those in which learners rated a detail as absent while the instructor rated it as present, and those in which learners rated a detail as present while the instructor rated it as absent. Omissions occurred infrequently, in which both the learner and instructor agreed that a detail was absent. The specific instructional framework used in this study and implications for university-level ASL instruction are discussed in this article.