Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) also called to as social language, is an informal form of language that is used when interacting with people we are familiar with like family members and friends while Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), also called academic language, is a formal type of language that is used in classroom setting and work places.
BICS differs from CALP in the following ways. Social language allows the use of abbreviations and colloquial words like ‘cool’ and ‘dude’ in the conversation while academic language does not use abbreviations and slang expression but rather the use of correct language structures and special vocabularies. This makes social language simple, easy to learn and understand thus taking a shorter period of time to develop. Distinctively, academic language takes many years to develop because of the complex language structures. Teachers are recommended to use learners’ native language in conducting academic classes to enable develop academic language in English Language Learners (ELLs). According to (Cummins, 2000, as cited in, "How students acquire social and academic language," n.d.), when learners understand a vocabulary in their native language, it makes it easy to understand and teach in English.
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Obstacles to achivement of educational goals for ELL students today include English as Second Language (ESL) programs drawn for ELLs. This also suppresses the efforts of dual language programs. According to (Short & Echevarria, 2014), instead of taking ESL programs, ELLs and parents are advised to use native language at home so that learners can develop literacy skills which will make learning of English easy . Therefore, potential change agents for implementing this recommendation are parents and learners.
In summary, both BICS and CALP play a big role in language development. Using native language in conversations is viewed as the best way to develop literacy skills which make learning of academic language easy to teach and understand.
References
How students acquire social and academic language. (n.d.). ASCD: Professional Learning & Community for Educators. https://www.ascd.org/publications/books/106048/chapters/How-Students-Acquire-Social-and-Academic-Language.aspx.
Short, D., & Echevarria, J. (2004). Teacher skills to support English language learners. Educational leadership, 62(4), 8-13.
