What was really interesting to me about this week’s readings is how they are able to build on each other. Lippi Green’s “The Myth of non-accent” and the Crash Course video gives us the foundation to understand how language acquisition happens and the impacts of it. These two sources explain to us that language acquisition is easier when we are younger because we have the tools to learn language that is built through a certain age. I think Lippi Green’s analogy of having the materials and blueprints when you are first building a house and losing it when you get older and are trying to build a new house was very helpful. The video further explains why we lose the blueprints as babies lose the ability to distinguish sounds that aren’t relevant to the language that they are learning around the 6 to 12 month period. This means that adults usually have a harder time learning new languages even though we have the foundations to do so. Adults also have a harder time getting the correct accents in the new language. Using Lippi Green’s analogy again, adults are merely imitating the appearance of other people's buildings and making their own materials. However, having the foundations often makes it easier to acquire more advanced skills in other languages.
These two sources are a foundation to the chapter by Cummins. Cummins argued that there was a difference between conversational English and academic English which he calls basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). Many children are able to learn BICS in 2 to 3 years through interactions with their peers to the point that they don’t have an accent because the critical period of language learning allows them to get a better grasp of the sounds as explained by the video and Lippi Green. However, CALP takes 5 to 7 years for emergent bilinguals because they don’t have those foundations yet in either language which they are learning at the same time. Cummins argues that these distinctions are important and useful because it explains why emergent bilinguals seem fluent when you speak to them, but do poorly on exams, instead of believing that there is something neurologically with bilingual students for having a gap. He also argues that by knowing the difference, we can account for it and design assessments.
However, I agree with Nelson Flores as he argues that the BICS and CALP is an inherently racist framework that deems the language practices of emergent bilinguals, especially POC, as deficient which has an impact in the classroom. Furthermore, it doesn’t accurately reflect how the emergent bilingual students use their language practices. It often pushes teachers to overly police their students for using “non academic language” and positions student’s home language as deficient. Furthermore, it restricts students from fully utilizing their whole identities. Academic language itself is more related to how the listener perceives it. Although BICS and CALP is consistent with empirical data and it is becoming more popular with ESL educators, that doesn’t mean that it is the best framework for emergent bilingual students. I’m very interested in Flores’ language architecture framework which puts the power in the hands of the students who already have knowledge of translanguaging.