Multilingual glossary of key terms in language education

Reference:

These two concepts are based on the theory of J. Cummins. BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) refers to interpersonal communication skills. These are used in everyday exchanges which are less cognitively demanding because they are highly contextualised.

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) refers to the ability of learners to understand and express, both orally and in writing, concepts and ideas in the relevant academic disciplines. These skills (CALP) are very important for academic success. It is more cognitively costly because it involves metacognitive thinking such as hypothesising, assessing, inferring, generalising, predicting and classifying. Cummins considers that BICS and CALP are developed jointly. It takes two years to develop BICS and six to seven years (or more) to acquire CALP (according to Cummins, 2008).

Source: Cummins J. (2008), "BICS and CALP: Empirical and theoretical status of the distinction", in Street B. and Hornberger N.H. (eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education, 2nd edition, Volume 2, Literacy, Springer Science + Business Media LLC, pp. 71-83.

References:

"Bilingualism is the regular use of two or more languages or dialects in everyday life (...) many people who live with two or more languages do not have equivalent, or perfect, knowledge of them since they use their languages in different areas, with different people, for different purposes (...principle of complementarity)" (Grosjean, 2013).

Source:
Grosjean F. (2013), Interview given to the "A bonne école.net" website on Wednesday, 9 January 2013, Interview by Assmaâ Rakho-Mom, www.francoisgrosjean.ch/interviews_2013_fr.html/interviews_2013_fr.html accessed 27 July 2022.

"Bilinguals are not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, they have a unique and specific linguistic configuration." (Grosjean, 1985, p. 467, own translation)

Original quote: "the bilingual is not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, he or she has a unique and specific linguistic configuration". (Grosjean, 1985, p. 467)

Source:
Grosjean F. (1985), "The bilingual as a competent but specific speaker-hearer", Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 6:6, pp. 467-477, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.1985.9994221.

"By bilinguals we mean people who use two or more languages (or dialects) in everyday life. This includes people who have oral proficiency in one language and written proficiency in another, people who speak two languages with different levels of proficiency in each (and who can neither read nor write either), but also, of course, people who have a very good command of two (or more) languages." (Grosjean, 2018, pp. 8-9, own translation)

Source:
Grosjean F., "Être bilingue aujourd'hui", Revue Française de linguistique appliquée, nº 232, 2018, pp. 7-14.

"A person's bilingualism is a dynamic process influenced by life events. The bilingual's linguistic configuration will evolve following major changes such as changes at school, entry into working life, the start of married life, moving house and/or migrating, the loss of a loved one with whom one of the languages was spoken, etc." (Grosjean, 2018, p. 9, own translation).

Source:
Grosjean F. (2018), "Être bilingue aujourd'hui", Revue française de linguistique appliquée, nº 232, 2018, pp. 7-14.