Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills
Encyclopedia
Basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) are language
skills needed to interact in social situations, for example, when speaking to a friend on the telephone. BICS refers primarily to context-bound, face-to-face communication, like the language first learned by toddlers and preschoolers, which is used in everyday social interaction.
We use this language skill in face-to-face interactions, rather than in dealing with academic tasks.
This term is often credited to Jim Cummins
research related to language acquisition and learning. The other term that is often used in conjunction with this term is cognitive academic language proficiency
(CALP). CALP refers to the highly abstract, decontextualized communication that takes place in the classroom, especially in the later elementary grades. CALP involves the “language of learning”, which enables children to problem-solve, hypothesize, imagine, reason and project into situations with which they have no personal experience. It is a prerequisite for learning to read and write and for overall academic success. The implications of the BICS and CALP concepts for children are that the second language or language of the classroom needs to be sufficiently well developed for her or him to be able to meet the cognitive demands of the academic setting.http://www.hanen.org/web/Home/AboutHanen/NewsViews/OneLanguageorTwo/tabid/220/Default.aspx Students typically are thought to acquire BICS in 2–3 years but take 5–7 years to develop the CALP needed to be on the same level with their native speaking counterparts in the classroom.
Although the terms BICS and CALP and still widely used, Cummins has more recently used the terms conversational language and academic language.
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
skills needed to interact in social situations, for example, when speaking to a friend on the telephone. BICS refers primarily to context-bound, face-to-face communication, like the language first learned by toddlers and preschoolers, which is used in everyday social interaction.
We use this language skill in face-to-face interactions, rather than in dealing with academic tasks.
This term is often credited to Jim Cummins
Jim Cummins (professor)
Dr. Jim Cummins is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where he works on language development and literacy development of learners of English as an additional language...
research related to language acquisition and learning. The other term that is often used in conjunction with this term is cognitive academic language proficiency
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
Cognitive academic language proficiency is a language-related term which refers to formal academic learning, as opposed to BICS. In schools today, the terms BICS and CALP are most frequently used to discuss the language proficiency levels of students who are in the process of acquiring a new...
(CALP). CALP refers to the highly abstract, decontextualized communication that takes place in the classroom, especially in the later elementary grades. CALP involves the “language of learning”, which enables children to problem-solve, hypothesize, imagine, reason and project into situations with which they have no personal experience. It is a prerequisite for learning to read and write and for overall academic success. The implications of the BICS and CALP concepts for children are that the second language or language of the classroom needs to be sufficiently well developed for her or him to be able to meet the cognitive demands of the academic setting.http://www.hanen.org/web/Home/AboutHanen/NewsViews/OneLanguageorTwo/tabid/220/Default.aspx Students typically are thought to acquire BICS in 2–3 years but take 5–7 years to develop the CALP needed to be on the same level with their native speaking counterparts in the classroom.
Although the terms BICS and CALP and still widely used, Cummins has more recently used the terms conversational language and academic language.
Further reading
- One Language or Two?: Answers to Questions about Bilingualism in Children
- http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/