BICS and CALP

What are they?

BICS Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills
Relies heavily on nonlinguistic cues and context
Interactions take place outside of the classroom
They are social and casual
CALP Cognitive Academic Language proficiency
Classroom language
Required for abstract, analytical thinking
Students can speak proficiently
Similarities/differences
Similarities:
Both are related to language proficiency
Both deal with skills that are constantly evolving
Differences:
Students master BICS quicker than CALP
CALP involves more complex grammatical structure
CALP uses more formal terms while BICS involves more casual language
How they perform/integrate w/ELL
Both BICS and CALP are related to students proficiency in English. BICS deals
with the development of students social language while CALP deals with their
proficiency in the classroom. The time it takes for students to become proficient in
social and classroom language varies for each individual student.