Friday, May 18, 2007
BICS and CALP in English Class
One of my classes, a 9th grade standard(lower level) English class, is learning Romeo & Juliet. About 3/4 of the class is Hispanic, and many of them are ELL students. More than a few of them speak Spanish to each other before class. However, when the class starts,and they are called on in class, they speak perfect English. Despite their perfect English, they still struggle with the language in the story. Obviously, any freshman struggles with the difficult language used in Shakespeare's plays, but they seem to struggle more than the others. I don't think that this has to do with their intelligence as much as it has to do with BICS and CALP. The students who speak English well have aquired BICS, and therefore have mastered English in everyday situtations. But these students have yet to learn CALP, which involves the use of language skills academically, and takes much longer to learn than BICS. I believe that it is that lack of language skills that contribute to their difficulty with the readings. These childen likely excel in other subjects, like science and math, because there is much less language used.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That is actually a very keen observation that you made. And you are absolutely right, not being familiar with the written language, at least as familiar as they are with the spoken language, is inhibiting them from understanding what they are reading in their English class. I have to admit though, that I have not encountered the same situation with my 9th graders.
While doing my student teaching I also encountered a situation regarding BICS and CALP. A student in the class, whose primary language was not English, was able to speak English very well to her classmates and the teacher. She spoke so well in fact, that I was shocked when I discovered she had only moved to the country one year earlier. When I saw the student’s written work for the first time however, it was much worse then I had expected it to be based upon how well I had heard her speak the language. Now I realize this was an example of BICS and CALP. The student had developed her basic interpersonal communication skills very well, but her cognitive academic language proficiency was lacking. Now that I am aware of the fact that it takes much longer for a student to acquire CALP, I will not fall into the trap of thinking that because a student can speak the language well does not mean that the student has mastered every aspect of the language. It is important to help these students better develop the language so that they can be successful academically.
Post a Comment