Implications for mainstream teachers
If teachers have an awareness of the likely difficulty of a task, based on Cummins' model, they can judge its appropriateness for the non-native speakers in their classes and in this way avoid much frustration. This does not mean, however, that ESL students should be fed a diet of cognitively-undemanding tasks. It may be beneficial to use such activities in the student's early days at school, in order to build confidence, or as a lead in to a more challenging activity. However, teachers should switch soon to tasks that engage the students' brains, making these tasks accessible by providing visual or other support. Once students are comfortable with these kinds of activities, they can be gradually exposed to tasks that are both cognitively-demanding and context-reduced.
4. Additive/subtractive bilingualism
Cummins draws the distinction between additive bilingualism in which the first language continues to be developed and the first culture to be valued while the second language is added; and subtractive bilingualism in which the second language is added at the expense of the first language and culture, which diminish as a consequence. Cummins (1994) quotes research which suggests students working in an additive bilingual environment succeed to a greater extent than those whose first language and culture are devalued by their schools and by the wider society.
Implications for mainstream teachers
The dangers of subtractive bilingualism for the non-native speakers in our school are obviously not so strong as, say, for the children of immigrants to the USA. Nevertheless, we should do all we can to demonstrate to non-native English students that their cultures and languages are equally as valid and valued as the Anglo/American culture and English language that inevitably dominates school life. Teachers and departments should explore every possibility to incorporate the different cultural backgrounds of our students into their daily teaching and curricula.
Instruction: When writing the summary there are three main requirements:
The summary should cover the original as a whole.
Organize your notes into an outline which includes main ideas and supporting points but no examples or details (dates, numbers, statistics).
Write an introductory paragraph that begins with a frame, including an in-text citation of the source and the author as well as a reporting verb to introduce the main idea.
The main idea or argument needs to be included in this first sentence of your summary. Then mention the major aspects/factors/reasons that are discussed in the article. If ytou Want to quote directly from the text, remember to give a full reference for this citation at the end of the summary.
For a one-paragraph summary, discuss each supporting point in a separate sentence. Give 1-2 explanations for each supporting point, summarizing the information from the original.
For a multi-paragraph summary, discuss each supporting point in a separate paragraph. Introduce it in the first sentence (topic sentence). In a longer summary, remind your reader that you are paraphrasing by using "reminder phrases," such as:
The author goes on to say that ...
The article (author) further states that ...
(Author's last name) also states/maintains/argues that ... (Author's last name) also believes that ...
(Author's last name) concludes that
The material should be presented in a neutral fashion.
The summary should be a condensed version of the material, presented in your own words.
Do not include anything that does not appear in the original.
Do not include your own comments or evaluation.
And be sure to identify your source.
Restate the article’s/paper’s conclusion in one sentence.
Unit 2-17. THE ICEBERG MODEL
Guidelines for extensive reading of texts on the use of ESP in European transnational education
Bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) educators commonly refer to two types of English language proficiency: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). As you have already learned these terms were coined by Jim Cummins (1980) who found that while most students learned sufficient English to engage in social communication in about two years, they typically needed five to seven years to acquire the type of language skills needed for successful participation in content classrooms. Limited English proficient (LEP) students’ language skills are often informally assessed upon the ability of the student to comprehend and respond to conversational language. However, students who are proficient in social situations may not be prepared for the academic, context-reduced situations, and literacy demands of mainstream classrooms. Judging students’ language proficiency based on oral and/or social language assessments becomes problematic when the students perform well in social conversations but do poorly on academic tasks. The students may be incorrectly tagged as having learning deficits or may even be referred for testing as learning disabled. To avoid the possibility of incorrect evaluation of students Cummins (1984) offered a theoretical framework which embeds the CALP language proficiency concept within a larger theory of Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP).
Text 2-17. CLARIFYING JIM CUMMINS’ ICEBERG MODEL
(Based on the selection from resources of the Illinois Resource Center in www.thecenterweb.org)
The terms BICS and CALP tend to be imprecise, value-laden, simplified, and misused to stereotype English language learners. BICS describes social, conversational language used for oral communication. English language learners can comprehend social language by:
observing speakers’ non-verbal behavior (gestures, facial expressions and eye actions);
observing others’ reactions;
using voice cues such as phrasing, intonations, and stress;
observing pictures, concrete objects, and other contextual cues which are present;
asking for statements to be repeated, and/or clarified.
CALP is the context-reduced language of the academic classroom. It takes five to seven years for English language learners to become proficient in the language of the classroom because:
non-verbal clues are absent;
there is less face-to-face interaction;
academic language is often abstract;
literacy demands are high (narrative and expository texts and academic texts are written beyond the language proficiency of the students); and cultural/linguistic knowledge is often needed to comprehend fully.
Cummins (1984) addressed this problem through a theoretical framework which embeds the CALP language proficiency concept within a larger theory of Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP).
Cummins’ common underlying proficiency model of bilingualism can be pictorially represented in the form of two icebergs. The two icebergs are separate above the surface. That is, two languages are visibly different in outward conversation. Underneath the surface, the two icebergs are fused such that the two languages do not function separately. Both languages operate through the same central processing system.
Language proficiency alone will not determine when English language learners are prepared to use their second language (L2) to learn with their grade level monolingual English-speaking peers.
Social Language
L1 L2
S
urface
level
Common Underlying Proficiency
(Central Operating System)
Previous schooling, academic knowledge, and literacy skills that second language learners have in their first language (L1) are also strong determiners (Cummins, 1984, Baker, 1993). Cummins’ framework may be summarized as follows:
Regardless of the language in which a person is operating, the thoughts that accompany talking, reading, writing, and listening come from the same central engine. When a person owns two or more languages, there is one integrated source of thought.
Bilingualism and multilingualism are possible because people have the capacity to store two or more languages. People can function in two or more languages with relative ease.
Information processing skills and educational attainment may be developed through two languages as well as through one language. Cognitive functioning and school achievement may be fed through one monolingual channel or equally successfully through two well developed language channels. Both channels feed the same central processor.
The language the student is using in the classroom needs to be sufficiently well developed to be able to process the cognitive challenges of the classroom.
Speaking, listening, reading or writing in the first or the second language helps the whole cognitive system to develop. However, if students are made to operate in an insufficiently developed second language, the system will not function well. If students are made to operate in the classroom in a poorly developed second language, the quality and quantity of what they learn from complex materials and produce in oral and written form may be relatively weak.
It will be instructive to to read Professor Cummins’ presentation in which he clarifies the distinction between BICS and CALP:
BICS and CALP: Clarifying the Distinction (by Jim Cummins, University of Toronto)
I welcome the opportunity offered by Bernardo Garcia's discussion of BICS and CALP to clarify aspects of the distinction. I originally suggested the distinction between basic interpersonal communicative skills and cognitive academic language proficiency 20 years ago (Cummins, 1979) as a qualification to John 0ller's (1979) claim that all individual differences in language proficiency could be accounted for by just one underlying factor, which he termed global language proficiency.
0ller synthesized a considerable amount of data showing strong correlations between performance on cloze tests of reading, standardized reading tests, and measures of oral verbal ability (e.g. vocabulary measures). I pointed out that not all aspects of language use or performance could be incorporated into one dimension of global language proficiency.
For example, if we take two monolingual English-speaking siblings, a 12-year old child and a six-year old, there are enormous differences in these children's ability to read and write English and in their knowledge of vocabulary, but minimal differences in their phonology or basic fluency. The six-year old can understand virtually everything that is likely to be said to her in everyday social contexts and she can use language very effectively in these contexts, just as the 12-year old can.
Similarly, in second language acquisition contexts, immigrant children often acquire peer-appropriate conversational fluency in English within about 2 years but it requires considerably longer (5-10 years) to catch up academically in English (Collier, 1987; Cummins, 1984). Thus, there are clear differences in acquisition and developmental patterns between conversational language and academic language, or BICS and CALP. The distinction receives strong support from Biber's (1986) analysis of an enormous corpus (more than one million words) of authentic discourse gathered from a wide range of communicative situations, both written and oral.
Failure to take account of these data led to inappropriate psychological testing of bilingual students and premature exit from bilingual or ESL support programs into "mainstream" classes where students received minimal support for continued academic language development. In other words, the conceptual distinction between BICS and CALP highlighted misconceptions about the nature of language proficiency that were contributing directly to the creation of academic failure among bilingual students.
Bernardo Garcia's major concern appears to be that bilingual students are being "kept from certain intellectual experiences" and their "full participation...in instructional activities" is postponed until they are considered to "have CALP". He also points out that there are "situations in which CALP is achieved before BICS" (e.g. the scientist who reads a text written in a language which she doesn't speak).
A few points of clarification are in order. The sequential nature of BICS/CALP acquisition was suggested as typical in the specific situation of immigrant children learning a second language. It was not suggested as an absolute order that applies in every, or even the majority of situations.
Thus attainment of high levels of L2 CALP can precede attainment of fluent L2 BICS in certain situations. The point remains, however, that these dimensions of language are conceptually distinct. For example, cognitive skills are undoubtedly involved in one's ability to tell jokes effectively and if we work at it we might improve our joke-telling ability throughout our lifetimes.
However, our joke-telling ability is largely unrelated to our academic performance. And the fact remains that phonological skills in our native language and our basic fluency reach a plateau in the first six or so years; in other words, the rate of subsequent development is very much reduced in comparison to previous development. This is not the case for literacy and vocabulary knowledge (CALP) which continue to develop at least throughout our schooling and usually throughout our lifetimes.
To say that BICS and CALP are conceptually distinct is not the same as saying that they are separate or acquired in different ways. Developmentally they are not necessarily separate; all children acquire their conceptual foundation (knowledge of the world) through conversational interactions in the home. Similarly, discussion about conceptual issues is an important, and in many situations essential, way of deepening our understanding of concepts and developing critical literacy. By the same token, cognitive skills are involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in most forms of social interaction.
This intersection of the cognitive and social aspects of language proficiency, however, does not mean that they are identical or reducible one to the other.The implicit assumption that conversational fluency in English is a good indicator of "English proficiency" has resulted in countless bilingual children being "diagnosed" as learning disabled or retarded.
Despite their developmental intersections, BICS and CALP are conceptually distinct insofar as they follow different developmental patterns. To re-iterate the point: both native-English-speaking and immigrant children usually reach a plateau in the development of native-like phonology and fluency after several years of acquisition but CALP continues to develop throughout schooling.
An additional point is that the distinction was not proposed as an overall theory of language but as a very specific conceptual distinction which had important implications for policy and practice. The fact that the distinction does not address issues of sociolinguistics or discourse styles or any number of other linguistic issues is irrelevant. The usefulness of any theoretical construct should be assessed in relation to the issues that it attempts to address, not in relation to issues that it makes no claim to address. To suggest that the BICS/CALP distinction is invalid because it does not account for subtleties of sociolinguistic interaction or discourse styles is like saying:"This apple is no good because it doesn't taste like an orange."
What are the policy implications for instruction of the fact that immigrant students usually require at least five years to catch up to grade norms in L2 CALP? Garcia is correct in noting that the distinction says nothing about the appropriate time to introduce English reading or other forms of cognitively challenging content instruction in English. The distinction is not addressed to this issue.
The distinction and related research does suggest that if English language learning students are transitioned into a "mainstream" class in which the teacher knows very little about how to promote academic skills in a second language, then they are unlikely to receive the instructional support they need to catch up academically. The distinction also suggests some clear reasons related to inappropriate assessement why bilingual students are seriously over-represented in classes for the learning disabled or mildly handicapped and under-represented in classes for gifted and talented students.
Garcia also mentions the interdependence between L1 and L2 CALP which I have also termed the common underlying proficiency (CUP). This notion derives from the fact that L1 and L2 CALP tend to be strongly related to each other and strong promotion of L1 literacy in school in the early grades entails no adverse consequences for English. These statements reflect an enormous amount of research data; they are not based on theoretical speculation. The theoretical constructs of CUP and the BICS/CALP distinction can be used to account for aspects of these research data (Cummins, 1984, 1996).
I have argued that a bilingual program should be a genuine bilingual program with coherent and planned introduction of English reading and writing, together with reading and writing in the students' Ll. In dual language immersion programs where English Ll and Spanish Ll students are in the same classes, both groups developing biliteracy, there is no problem delaying the introduction of English language arts for one or two grades and focussing on Spanish language arts. English language arts are introduced strongly in grade 2 and increased in a coherent way throughout the elementary school. The results are extremely good for both groups (Cummins, 1996).
However, what is not appropriate is to have minimal English literacy instruction in the early grades of a transitional bilingual program and then at the grade 3 level transition students into an all-English classroom with no support for language learning. In the context of early-exit transitional bilingual education, students require a strong English literacy development program in the early grades just as they require a strong Spanish language literacy program. We should work for transfer of conceptual knowledge and language awareness across the student's two languages (e.g. have grade 1 and 2 students write, illustrate, and publish bilingual books). The languages enrich each other if taught appropriately (e.g. drawing students' attention to cognates and examples of powerful language use in both oral and written modes).
A bilingual program without a strong focus on providing intellectually challenging literacy activities in English is no more adequate than a bilingual program without a strong focus on providing intellectually challenging literacy activities in Spanish. We need to focus on both-and rather than reduce ourselves to either-or.
An instructional program in bilingual, ESL or "mainstream" classes designed to promote bilingual students' CALP should address the three components of the construct:
Cognitive the instruction should be cognitively challenging and require students to use higher-order thinking abilities rather than the low-level memorization and application skills that are tapped by typical worksheets or drill-and-practice computer programs;
Academic content (science, math, social studies, art etc.) should be integrated with language instruction as in content-based ESL programs (Chamot et al., 1997).
Language - the development of critical language awareness should be fostered throughout the program by encouraging students to compare and contrast their languages (e.g. phonics conventions, grammar, etc.) and by providing students with extensive opportunities to carry out projects investigating thei rown and their community's language use, practices, and assumptions (e.g. in relation to the status of different varieties).
In short, instruction within a strong bilingual program should provide a Focus on Message, a Focus on Language, and a Focus on Use in both languages (Cummins, 1988). We know our program is effective, and developing CALP, if we can say with confidence that our students are generating new knowledge, creating literature and art, and acting on social realities that affect their lives. These are the kinds of instructional activities that the BICS/CALP distinction is intended to foster.
Case study: Levels of Language Proficiency - Paired with Cummins’ Iceberg
Farquar came from Iraq a year ago at age 9. He only has about a year of formal education due to the war and subsequent closing of schools. Since entering school in the USA he has made little progress academically. What does his iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Rosa was educated in Mexico City. She reads and writes at grade level in Spanish but has little to no academic skills in English nor does she speak English. What does her iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Born in Los Angeles, Rafael speaks a mix of Spanish and English at home and school. He can converse quite well in both languages but is not making academic progress in either language. What does his iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Sho-Win does fairly well in her bilingual class. She reads and writes at grade level in Chinese. She plays mostly with English-speaking children at recess and is understood by them although she has no English academic skills. What does her iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Rona’s mother reads to her at home each night in Romanian. At the age of ten she reads at grade level in Romanian and is beginning to read some English books. What does her iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Lucia is able to converse with others fluently in both English and Spanish. She has moved quite frequently in her young life and is experiencing difficulty in all content areas including reading in both languages. What does her iceberg look like? What educational recommendations would you make?
Instruction: Writing this summary is going to be difficult because the text distinctly falls into three parts: 1/ excerpts from the resourses of the Illinois Resource Center, 2/ Professor Cummins’ presentation, and 3/ there is an addendum of case studies. Therefore you are facing an alternative: either sum up these three as separate sections within the framework of BICS – CALP – CUP concept or try and combine them as intertwined components of the two icebergs model which simulates the fusion of the two languages that do not function separately but operate through the same central processing system.
Anyway:
1) Skim the text you are going to summarize and focus on its division into sections.
2) Now that you’ve prepared, go ahead and read the selection. Read straight through. At this point, you don’t need to stop to look up anything that gives you trouble – just get a feel of Cummins’ main idea.
3) Underline topic sentences and key facts. Label areas that you want to refer to as you write your summary. Also label areas and specific details that should be avoided. Identify areas that you do not understand and try to clarify those points.
4) In steps 1–3, you divided the piece into sections and located the author’s main ideas and points. Now write down the main idea of each section in one well-developed sentence. Make sure that what you include in your sentences are key points, not minor details.
5) Review the sentences you wrote in step 4. From them, you should be able to create a thesis statement that clearly communicates what the entire text was trying to achieve. If you find that you are not able to do this step, then you should go back and make sure your sentences actually address key points.
6) At this point, your first draft is virtually done. You can use the thesis statement as the introductory sentence of your summary, and your other sentences can make up the body. Make sure that they are in order. Add some transition words (then, however, also, moreover) that help with the overall structure and flow of the summary. And once you are actually putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys!), remember these tips:
Write in the present tense.
Make sure to include the author and title of the work.
Be concise: a summary should not be equal in length to the original text.
If you must use the words of the author, cite them.
Don't put your own opinions, ideas, or interpretations into the summary. The purpose of writing a summary is to accurately represent what the author wanted to say, not to provide a critique.
7) Reread your summary and make certain that you have accurately represented the author’s ideas and key points. Make sure that you have correctly cited anything directly quoted from the text. Also check to make sure that your text does not contain your own commentary on the piece.
8) Revise your summary for style, grammar, and punctuation.
Unit 2-18. A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF ESP
Guidelines for extensive reading of texts on the use of ESP in European transnational education
Researchers and educators argue that the native-speaker-centred English language teaching model should be abandoned in favour of ELF or non-native-speaker-centred model. Ella Hujala’s study of ELF teaching in Finland finds that quite a few learners themselves express a wish to learn to speak English like the native speakers do. However there are many learners who claim they speak and always will speak a local variety of English.
EFL researches reveal that students’ attitudes fall into three main groups or clusters – the US friendly cluster, the pro-British cluster and the ELF cluster. Students, striving to improve their English, often mention that they are surprised at how many different ways there are to speak English, and how difficult it can be to understand all these varieties. Nevertheless, these people are extremely competent language users and are expected to get by professionally in multicultural work groups. Ella Hujala’s study seeks to understand how the actual ELF users experience English at the workplace, in relation to their own and others’ skills as well as their attitudes to ELF as a teaching and learning model.
Text 2-18. IN SEARCH FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF FINNISH SPEAKERS OF ELF
(Based on Ella Hujala’s study of English as a lingua franca)