Bics Vs Calp

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3 learning activities that encourage listening and speaking in CALP:

- Discuss what you have read (Aim: Speaking and listening)

Divide the class into two groups. Provide a list of 5 or 6 chapter books for each group and ask students to cast their votes anonymously for choosing a book to read as a group. Once votes are collected, announce the book that was voted the most in each team. Students can either volunteer for reading a chapter or the teacher can assign a chapter for each team members or a pair of two students can divide a chapter to read. On an assigned date, each pair or each group member can discuss the chapter they read. The rest of the students can be encouraged to ask content related or vocabulary questions if they wanted to. The teacher can list the vocabulary words on the board with their meanings. This activity requires critical thinking, analysis, summarizing and higher processing skills. For these reasons, it provides formal language development opportunities.

- Being a Teacher for a Session (Aim: speaking, listening and reading)

Write the name of all the students on the pieces of papers and put them in a jar. Draw a paper and announce the student’s name. The selected student can be a teacher for a session on a selected date. The session’s length can be chosen by the teacher in order to provide feedback and answer any questions. Provide a topic or ask the student to choose on a topic that he or she want to talk about in teaching a session. The topic could be anything such as, grammar related, reading, poetry and etc… By choosing a specific area, the teacher can give the student some sort of control and time to get prepared in the chosen area. This also gives an opportunity for the rest of the students to list their questions in the subject area that will be discussed in the classroom. This activity provides the chance for the students to study, read and listen in the subject area that they chose to discuss or instruct the class with. This activity requires critical thinking, speaking, reading and analyzing. Thus, it gives formal language development opportunities.

- Audio Book Reports (Aim: speaking, listening )

Ask students to pick their audio book and provide a report of their audio book. Students can have the option of incorporating technology such as, Power Point presentations, short video clips and etc… for their project. This activity involves a lot of listening. It also includes speaking, critical thinking, summarizing and decoding. Since this activity involves a lot of analytical and involves a lot of higher process skills, it provides formal language development.

Now that we know about BICS and CALP, it is very clear that it is essential for teachers to move students from BICS to CALP in a timely manner. Since CALP is said to be the basis for a students’ ability to cope with the academic demands in all content areas, it is very important for students to be moved from BICS to CALP as soon as ELLs develop or master BIC skills (Shoebottom, 2015). Teachers should be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that a student is proficient in a language when students demonstrate good social English or skills. Academic language acquisition does not only involve knowing the content area vocabulary. It involves comparing, classifying, evaluating and other skills. Thus, it is a process that takes time to develop full proficiency skills.

References

Curtin, E. (2009). Practical strategies for teaching English language learners. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill/Pearson.

Haynes, J. (2007). Explaining BICS and CALP. Everythingesl.net. Retrieved 30 November 2015, from http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/bics_calp.php

Shoebottom, P. (2015). The language learning theories of Professor J. Cummins. Esl.fis.edu. Retrieved 30 November 2015, from http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/cummin.htm

Stevens, L. (2015). BICS and CALP. Oswego.org. Retrieved 30 November 2015, from http://www.oswego.org/webpages/lstevens/index.cfm?subpage=6483