Development of a school-based assessment for measuring bilingual students’ academic language skills amongst Hong Kong Secondary students with different language backgrounds
Dr. Jack PUN
Department of English
City University of Hong Kong
Introduction
Summary
Bilingual Students’ Academic Language Skills Test is an assessment instrument that is designed to evaluate the bilingual students' academic language ability in eight aspects (i.e. EMI exposure, connecting ideas, tracking themes, organizing argumentative texts, awareness of academic register etc.). With considerable evidence of academic language assessment in English speaking context, many multilingual countries have started to explore the test for students' academic language skills in their own educational context. This study seeks, therefore, to contribute to explore HK students’ academic language levels and reading abilities.
Academic Language skills
Language development is inseparable from context and affected by learners’ accumulated opportunities to participate in literacy practices inside and outside of school. In contrast with widespread belief that language learning accomplishes in the early years, it continues throughout adolescence or even throughout the whole lifetime with learners expanding their vocabularies as well as grammatical and discourse proficiencies in a number of social contexts (Berman & Ravid, 2009). Extant studies have identified while the speakers are able to be cultivated as successful participants in the face-to-face colloquial communications in their own communities, school-based reading and learning pose a new type of challenges (Heath, 1983; Ochs, 1993). Learners who are lacked opportunities in active participation in use of school relevant language, are likely to face more challenges with the language for academic reading and learning (Schleppegrell, 2004; Snow & Uccelli, 2009).
The distinction between language skill categories was firstly suggested by the work of Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa (1976), noting that immigrant kids in Sweden often appeared to be fluent in both Finnish and Swedish but surprisingly showed different levels of verbal academic performance in both languages considerably under grade and age expectations when formally tested. Soon after, Cummins (1979) embarked on the argument about language skill division broadly in two types: basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS are described as the language skills useful to engage broadly in colloquial interactions with the collaborative support of gestures and intonations between speakers and listeners, while the CALP is featured as the language characteristic of text-based communication on cognitively demanding content. This definition of CALP by Cummins is the first attempt to explain academic language proficiency as a distinctly recognised and predictable way of using language.