Beyond BICS and CALP:

Evolving concepts in second language

acquisition Mike Anderson, Bonnie Swierzbin, Elaine Tarone MELEd, 2015

Three Framing Questions 1. How long does it take a newly arrived immigrant ESL

student who knows a few words of English to acquire English?

2. How do you see the concepts of BICS and CALP? 3. How do you describe the typical language learner

studied in SLA research?

Evolving ideas in theory and research • What do we know and what we can explain? • How do evolving foundational concepts fit into teacher

education? • How do they affect our classrooms today, the questions we

ask, and the explanations we provide? • 3 illustrations of how we can move beyond the talking points

and contextualize foundational concepts in today’s teaching situation.

1.How would you answer the following question for someone with no background in second language acquisition?

How long does it take a newly arrived immigrant ESL student who knows a few words of English to acquire academic English?

How long does it take? “Virginia Collier (1989) found that, for most students,

acquiring age-appropriate CALP takes several years.” (Lightbown & Spada, 2013, p.32)

Continuing Development • 1989 • Explaining how long it takes

• 2015 • What is the quickest (most effective) road to get students to

proficiency?

Academic Language: Current Thought • Focus on Dual Language Programs • How can we design programs for students for the most

efficient language and content acquisition? • Variety of methods • Context is important as is how we measure this

2. How do you see the concepts of BICS and CALP? BICS: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills CALP: Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency

Take a minute to draw a picture of how you see these concepts.

BICS/CALP: Does your picture look like this?

Maybe your BICS/CALP picture looks like this …

BICS/CALP: The original ideas Basic Interpersonal Communicative Language and Cognitive

Academic Language Proficiency were proposed as an alternative to the idea that all individual differences in language proficiency could be accounted for by ONE underlying factor (Cummins, 1979).

“Misconceptions about the nature of language proficiency” (Cummins, 1999) led to students’ early exit from ESL programs to mainstream classes with little or no support for developing academic language.

The Iceberg Model

http://is.eips.ca/about/school-news/post/working-with-esl-students-in-eips

Developmental relationships

Building bridges

3. How would you describe the typical language learner studied in SLA research?

SLA researchers can only know how SLA works in the kinds of learners they’ve studied – but there are unstudied learners in different contexts (Bigelow & Tarone 2004)

Research Context Affects SLA Findings

2014 UN Human Development Quartiles

Challenges to SLA Theory

1. In developing world, ELLs may learn English as L3 or L4:

their L1, not used in schools, is lost.

The story of V.

2. Many US immigrants from

developing world are not literate: How do they acquire ESL?

Few SLA studies on literacy & oral SLA

• Literacy level affects oral L2 processing

• Literate L2 learners visualize graphemes to help process oral L2 input

• Our study found low literate learners less likely to notice oral corrections to malformed English questions

Research in ‘nontraditional contexts’ still absent from major reviews of SLA research

So who can do this needed research? Teacher research is needed (Exploratory Practice & action research)

Summing up

Evolving concepts in SLA: 1.How long does it take? 2.BICS and CALP 3.Nature of ‘SLA’ in ‘nontraditional’ contexts

(developing countries, low literate learners)

References 2014 UN Human Development Report Quartiles. Accessed 11/3/15 at

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014_UN_Human_Development_Report_Quartiles.svg#/media

Are, O. B. (2013). Conceptual issues in second language research in Africa. Linguistik Online, 58, 1. Accessed 9/7/2015 at http://www.linguistik-online.de/58_13/are.html

Bigelow , M. & Tarone, E. (2004). The role of literacy level in SLA: Doesn’ t who we study determine what we know? TESOL Quarterly 38, 4: 689-700.

Collier, V.P. (1989). How long? A synthesis of research on academic achievement in second language. TESOL Quarterly, 23, 509-531.

Collier, V.P. (1987). Age and rate of acquisition of second language for academic purposes. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 617-641.

Ellis, R. (2008). Study of second language acquisition, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press.

References Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy, and thinking: Learning in the challenge zone.

Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Rauf, S. (2015) Politics of quality (language) education. CARLA presentation, University of Minnesota, Oct. 20, 2015.

Tarone, E., M. Bigelow & K. Hansen (2009). Literacy and second-language oracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, W.P., & Collier, V.P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students' long-term academic achievement. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, University of California-Santa Cruz (351 pp.)