Guide to Teachers
I. BICS/CALP
Situation
1:
You have a
student who speaks English very well.
She participates orally in the class and socialises with other
students. She even translates for other
students. However she is doing very poorly
in other content areas such as math and physical sciences.
This student has acquired BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) but has not yet
acquired CALPs (Cognitive Academic
Language Proficiency) needed to learn in content areas. Many second
language learners are exiting ESL programs at the BIC level which is Stage I
and lower Stage II (CLB 6-7) in the Canadian Language Benchmarks
Assessment. We need to work on CALPs
(CLB 7-8) before these students are leaving high school. Good BIC skills also
fool mainstream teachers, who think that a learner speaking with friends during
the break, is just being lazy when not doing his/her work.[1]
BICS are Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills. These are
the language skills needed for everyday personal and social communication.
Second language learners must have BICS in order to interact socially and in
the classroom. It usually takes students from 1-3 years to completely develop
this social language. BICS are not necessarily related to academic success.
CALP is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
and the language associated with native language literacy and cognitive
development. These are the language skills needed to undertake academic tasks
in the mainstream classroom. It includes content-specific vocabulary. It may
take students from 5 to 7 years to develop CALP skills. CALP developed in the first language
contribute to the development of CALP in the second language. So if your student has limited education in
first language, the development of CALP will take even longer.[2]
Consider the activities in the following framework and note
the language sophistication required.
Most of the requirements for successful high school performances are in
the Cognitively Demanding quadrants.