ESL Theories

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)
1. Language skills needed for social situations in environments with peers, teachers, and others
  1. Interacting with a student on the playground or in the lunch room, encouraging casual conversation
2. Jim Cummins
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
1. Language skills needed for academics
  1. Reading, speaking, writing, or listening in the classroom, working one on one with student
2. Jim Cummins
Input Hypothesis
1. Stephen Krashen
2. All people understand language in the same way through many forms of communication
  1. People who speak different languages can look at the same picture and get a similar understanding, so using different pictures and visual demonstrations can help ESL learners
Universal Grammar
1. Noam Chomsky
2. All languages are based on the different components of sentences such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives
  1. Try to relate the structure of the child's first language to the similar structure in sentences in English
Threshold Hypothesis
1. A person must be competent in one language before being able to understand and use another language
  1. Working with a student using their first language until they fully understand it and then adding English into the curriculum
2. Jim Cummins

Resource summary

	Created by kcm0023 over 9 years ago