In her article, Barbara Hawkins outlines second language acquisition as it relates to subject matter education in K-5 classrooms. She discusses classroom interaction, second language literacy development, and how teachers learn to connect theory and practice, especially as it relates to education for students learning content in their second language.
She divides her ideas into two layers. The first layer is: “Teaching discipline-specific content to children,” which discusses the importance of teachers being in the position of knowing and understanding the desired concept and the process in which students go through in order to achieve a full understanding. Teachers must be able to help the learners identify with language the new experiences associated with the content.
The second layer of her idea is “teaching elementary school children content in their second language.” The instruction she refers to in this layer is referred to as “Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English” (SDAIE), which means that the first foal of instruction is to teach content, not to see it as a “vehicle” for acquiring a second language. This layer analyzes Cummins's work on bilingual and second language acquisition has had a huge impact on L2 practices in elementary school settings.In his work he lays out his ideas about Basic Intrerpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). BICS is basically the language children use when interacting with their peers on the playground etc. Mastery in BICS can "fool" teachers into believing that their L2 students are further along in their language proficiency than they really are because they appear to be fluent when they may not be.This language can be acquired in about 2 years. CALP requires a lot more cognitively demanding and can take 5-7 years to acquire. It is the academic language that provides less interactive communication but is needed for academic/content success. Hawkins believes in dividing BCIS and CALP. She sees both as cognitively demanding because understanding and following all of the rules of a language takes cognitive ability. All language is social, and contextualized. This changes the way a teacher should view both their native speaking students and L2 students. It is stressed that we teachers need to realize that it is our role to guide our students in the social construction of content knowledge and be able to use language to scaffold new knowledge structures for our students as we interact with them. We need know our students well enough to be able to build their language and move them beyond where their thoughts currently take them, and provide them with experiences that will further their learning and understanding. Hawkins lays out five questions for teachers to ask themselves if students become lost:
1. Can the student relate to the experience I have provided?
2. Do they have the words to describe what it is that they are experiencing?
3. Do they understand the open ended problem that I have presented to them?
4. Are they developmentally ready for the concepts I am trying to teach them?
5. Do they have enough situational support to understand the classroom discourse?
Teachers must also be aware that L2 students are going to require more time and attention on content understanding. All students, especially second language learners are not always able to explain to their teachers exactly what is going on in their minds so it is crucial that we learn to listen and observe in new ways. Overall, we teachers must know the their subjects matter inside and out, we need to know the interplay between language and content education, the cultures and experiences of our students, and most importantly we need to be willing to learn new things all the time, for a teacher can never know too much!
What do YOU think?
Do you agree with Hawkins in the fact that CALP and BICS should be divided? Or, do you think that they can be just as successful alone?
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I agree with Hawkins, that for a more complete acquisition of a second language, CALP and BICS should be divided. Both methods, in my opinion, have essential parts to learning a language that should most definitely be combined in the classroom for the best results. I do agree that CALP may have more importance overall. Rather than dealing solely with the social aspects of a language, it deals with the academics of a language and thus leads to a more complete understanding. However I still feel that communication skills are important, and that a knowledge in the social aspects of a language can aide in comprehension of the academic aspects. In my opinion, a division of CALP and BICS is the best option.
ReplyDeleteI also think that the two should be divided. She's right that both academic and conversational language are heavily contextualized. In my volunteer work at the refugee center I've seen the difference between the two. There were many students who could converse easily, but couldn't understand for example their history readings. They relied heavily on gestures, expressions and tones to make sense of what was being said.
ReplyDeleteJessie, great example from your volunteer work.
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