Auslan: Second Language Learner F–10 Sequence / Levels 5 and 6 / Understanding / Language awareness
Content description
Explore the current status and profile of Auslan and of the Deaf community in contemporary Australian society, considering issues such as language transmission, usage and documentation
Elaborations
describing the visibility and use of Auslan in the wider community, for example in television programs, on the news, at community events, sporting fixtures and in emergency announcements
discussing the diversity of Auslan users in the Australian community, including people who are deaf, those who are hard of hearing and hearing people such as CODAs and interpreters
investigating the signed languages used by deaf and hard of hearing members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
exploring variation in Auslan fluency among classmates and members of the Deaf community, considering the relevance of factors such as where and when individual users learnt to sign and whether they are from a Deaf or hearing family
mapping sign language use around the world using data from Ethnologue, for example by identifying and labelling countries with correct naming of the sign language used, such as France = LSF: Langue des Signes Française; Germany = DGS: Deutsche Gebärdensprache
finding representations of signing deaf people in the media or in literary texts, and evaluating how they and the language are represented
investigating the profile and distribution of members of the Deaf community, for example across states of Australia or by age or gender, using data from censuses and other sources to summarise and represent information in graph/visual forms, and to suggest possible explanations of patterns or statistics
understanding the role and function of Auslan–English interpreters and Deaf interpreters and the access and opportunities they provide to language users
recognising that many languages are well-documented, strong, healthy and widely used by many people across generations while others are less well-documented and robust
recognising that some languages have no written form and have historically been passed on face to face/orally, which means that they are less well recorded or documented
recognising language documentation as an important means of recording, maintaining, transmitting and revitalising a language
understanding the nature of transmission of Auslan, for example, that in most cases Auslan is not passed on from parent to child but from peers, or is learnt by children from adults outside the family, and that some Deaf people learn Auslan later in early adulthood
describing how Auslan has been transmitted across generations and how it has been recorded, investigating reasons for the ‘oral’ tradition language transmission
using the UNESCO atlas to map the world’s minority languages and those that are in critical endangerment and to document the vitality of signed languages
exploring how different technologies are used by deaf people to support social networks and strengthen their community and language
explaining the significance of stories linked to Deaf social history and the responsibility of the Deaf community to convey shared experiences that relate to Deaf history and significant sites, for example by sharing stories about school days in the past
identifying examples of deaf people who have been recognised for different reasons in wider Australian society, for example, Alastair McEwin or Drisana Levitzke-Gray, and discussing how such recognition contributes to broader awareness of Auslan in Australia
