What Is BICS And CALP: A Critical Appraisal?

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BICS & CALP: A critical appraisal Mohammad Reza Mozayan _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 1Ph. D. Candidate in TEFL, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Yazd, Iran. Author’s Email: mozayan38@yahoo.com ____________________________________________________________ Abstract: In second language acquisition, it is crucial to take into account specific factors which influence the attitude held by different groups of learners leading to different levels of L2 proficiency. Some of these important factors comprise age, sex, social class, and ethnic identity (Ellis, …show more content…

English students apply BICS when they are, for example, on the playground, at the dentist's office, in a bus station, at parties, talking on the phone and so many other day-to-day social interactions with other people. BICS usually takes place in social interactions which are usually context-embedded and meaningful. As a result, they are not very demanding cognitively. The language used in these situations is not technical or very specialized. BICS skills usually develop within six months to two years after the first exposure to English as the students’ L2 or L3. BICS include known ideas, vocabulary, syntax and aspects of daily routine communication mainly the informal aspects which do not require a high degree of cognition such as naming objects and actions, negation, rejection and so forth. CALP includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing about subject area content material. CALP is essential for students to succeed in school. CALP develops through social interaction from birth but separates from BICS after starting school. CALP is specific to the social context of schooling. Academic language acquisition does not just contribute to the understanding of technical vocabulary of a specific content area. It includes skills such as comparing, classifying, synthesizing, evaluating, and inferring. Academic language tasks are context reduced and as a student gets older, the context of academic tasks becomes more and more reduced. The language also becomes more cognitively demanding as more new ideas, concepts and language are presented to the students at the same time (Cummins, 1981b). "Failure to take account of the BICS/CALP (conversational/academic) distinction has resulted in discriminatory psychological assessment of bilingual students and premature exit from language support programs (e.g. bilingual education in the United States) into mainstream classes" (Cummins, 1984: cited in Cummins,

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