Book’s Blog 5

Chapter 2        Distinguishing Between Academic and Conversational Language

Chapter 2 starts with an example of ESL struggling learner. Dolores was 14 when she came from El Salvador to the USA with a limited formal education. The authors present an essay from Dolores’ writings to differentiate between academic & conversational language. They analyze this essay and they use it later in different places of this book. Then, they review Cummins’ work and framework that shows the differences between academic and conversational language. I believe that every classroom teacher must understand the difference between conversational language and academic language and their acquisition as well.

I add a simple description of BICS and CALP as theorized by Jim Cummins.

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are language skills needed in social situations. It is the day-to-day language needed to interact socially with other people. English language learners (ELLs) employ BICS when they are on the playground, in the lunch room, on the school bus, at parties, playing sports and talking on the telephone. Social interactions are usually context embedded. They occur in a meaningful social context. They are not very demanding cognitively. The language required is not specialized. These language skills usually develop within six months to two years after arrival in the U.S. Problems arise when teachers and administrators think that a child is proficient in a language when they demonstrate good social English.

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) refers to formal academic learning. This includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing about subject area content material. This level of language learning is essential for students to succeed in school. Students need time and support to become proficient in academic areas. This usually takes from five to seven years. Recent research has shown that if a child has no prior schooling or has no support in native language development, it may take seven to ten years for ELLs to catch up to their peers. Academic language acquisition isn't just the understanding of content area vocabulary. It includes skills such as comparing, classifying, synthesizing, evaluating, and inferring. Academic language tasks are context reduced. Information is read from a textbook or presented by the teacher. As a student gets older the context of academic tasks becomes more and more reduced. The language also becomes more cognitively demanding. New ideas, concepts and language are presented to the students at the same time.

Cummins also advances the theory that there is a common underlying proficiency (CUP) between two languages. Skills, ideas and concepts students learn in their first language will be transferred to the second language. He hypothesizes that there are 2 components of language proficiency:

a)     one that reflected the ability to carry on conversations on everyday topics, and

b)     another that was needed to comprehended, talk, read, and write about school subjects (p. 28).

I like his definition of academic language as “the extent to which an individual has command of the oral & written academic register of schooling” because it reminds my with Gee’s Discourses. To help educators conceptualize the distinction between BICS & CALP, he used quadrants formed by 2 intersecting continua shown below to illustrate that conversational language is context embedded and cognitively undemanding while academic language is context reduced and cognitively demanding.

                            
               

or as the following figure that shows how to determine if a task or exercise falls within the BICS or CALP continua. By using a matrix with two axes (Context-Embedded language and Context-reduced language) we can see how certain task may be more or less demanding.

For more details, press here.