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Amy Manley
Professor Ingman
EDUC-X 426.1
18 October 2020
BICS and CALP

Students with Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills are proficient in conversational

English and are able to use it to accomplish basic academic tasks. They easily communicate with

their teacher and friends and laugh and play with other kids during recess. Students with BICS

work well in peer groups and contribute to group projects. They would appear engaged in

teacher-led lessons and be able to answer questions on what had been discussed. It may even be

hard to tell that they are an English learner because their informal English appears natural.

Students with Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency are able to use English to

complete advanced academic tasks. They can compare and contrast, predict what might happen

in a story, and answer questions based on what they read, even if it was not discussed as a class.

In math, they can understand what a word problem is asking them and translate the mathematical

English into a solvable equation. Older students with CALP understand definitions of words that

mostly relate to abstract concepts and can compare them using analogies, helping them succeed

in state and college-readiness testing.

It is common to find children with a combination of BICS and CALP. According to

Cummins theory, students will become proficient using BICS three or more years before they

reach fluency level with CALP (Diaz-Rico 46). These students sound like native English

speakers in conversation, but their academic English is not yet fluent. They may struggle with

reading comprehension and stumble over words when reading out loud. Their writing may lack
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proper flow and be difficult to follow. When I asked my friend Cara Franklin, a fourth-grade

teacher, about her English learners, she noted that they “have difficulty with correct subject-verb

agreement (conjugation), and word order in sentences (subject, verb, object).” In my experience

as a substitute teacher, it is often difficult for me to tell which students are English learners. I

must keep in mind that every class probably has students with BICS that are still working to

achieve CALP, even if it is not obvious to me.

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Works Cited

Diaz-Rico, Lynne. The Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook: A

Complete K-12 Reference Guide. 6th ed., Pearson, 2017.