Bilingual Education: BICS And CALP

NAME Faraj M Aljarih

T&L 510

09/22/15

Assignment Group B

Synthesis 3

Draft 1

Word Count: 655  

BICS and CALP

BICS and CALP are two concepts usually used in the field of bilingual education to refer to the basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS and CALP are used to describe minority students’ levels of language proficiency (Rolstad and MacSwan, 2008). Minority students’ teachers need to be aware of those concepts and distinguish between, in order to effectively provide effective assessment for those students.

Before proceeding to further discuss the basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), it may be helpful to

elaborate more about these concepts. Baker (2006) explains that:
BICS occurs when there are contextual supports and props for language delivery. Face-to-face `context embedded´ situations provide, for example, non-verbal support to secure understanding. Actions with eyes and hands, instant feedback, cues and clues support verbal language. CALP, on the other hand, is said to occur in ‘context reduced’ academic situations. Where higher order thinking skills (e.g. analysis, synthesis, evaluation) are required in the curriculum, language is ‘disembedded’ from a meaningful, supportive context. Where language is ‘disembedded’ the situation is often referred to as ‘context reduced’. (p. 174)
Form this explanation that Baker (2006) provide, it becomes evident that both of the academic and social languages has its own features.

In this regard, Cummins (2008) points out that minority students usually take two years to acquire the language needed for social interactions, while they take longer periods in order to become proficient in the use of that language and the ability to use it academic contexts. While learning a second language, students from language minority groups are usually evaluated on their ability to use the second language in social contexts, such as in conversations, while overlooking their skills and abilities in using academic language proficiently (Wiley & Rolstad, 2014). These types of assessment, when evaluating students’ social language skills only in isolation form their academic skills, become challenging when students do well on social activities but do not do the same in academic

ones.
An example illustrating how significant distinguishing between BICS and CALP is would be the case of the Arabic language speaker Samer Alhares, who came to Cleveland, Ohio from Libya to learn English. Once started classes, Samer was exposed by his teacher to various types of activities. The activities focused generally on developing Samer’s communication skills, especially in speaking and listening. He had, for instance, an activity where he had to go to Walmart and ask about certain items and engage with the employees in a conversation. The second day, Samer had to describe to his classmates his experience and how he communicated and negotiated meanings in the activity. Although he did well and later graduated after moving from “the status of a “limited English proficient” student to that of “fluent English proficient” student” (Rolstad & MacSwan, 2008, p. 62), Samer faced numerous challenges when started college. For instance, when was asked to submit critique papers regarding academic readings, he often got points of and comments for his poorly used academic language. Many of the comments he received were specifically about his continues use of abbreviation and terms used in speaking or in informal language. His teachers’ remarks usually stressed on the need to improve his academic language and develop. Although he has been in the US for a while, Samer thinks that he still needs to work more to develop his academic language proficiency (S. Alhares, personal communication, October 4, 2015).
The case of Samer highlights the need to distinguish between the social and academic language especially by instructors who may need to be aware that evaluation of ESL students cannot be effective if it overlooks the periods the students spend in developing their both BICS skills and CALP.

Assessing students in both areas without considering this distinction will be unfair for many ESL students, since they may still be in the process of development of one or both skills.

References

Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Cummins, J. (2008). BICS and CALP: Empirical and theoretical status of the distinction. In B.V. Street & N.H. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 2 (pp. 71-83). New York, NY: Springer.

Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (2008). BICS/CALP theory. In J. González (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education, Vol. 1 (pp. 62-65). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Wiley, T.G., & Rolstad, K. (2014). The Common Core State Standards and The Great Divide. International Multilingual Research Journal, 8(1),

38-55.