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Communication Skills And Language Proficiency

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Field Experience AK is a nine year old ELL student in Mrs. Tobin’s fourth grade classroom. He was five years old and entering Kindergarten when his family moved to the United States of America from Macedonia. This means he’s been in the country for four years and he has received all of his formal schooling here in the United States, and as a result he has never learned to read or write in his native Macedonian language. AK speaks English at home with his mother, but she has a very distinct accent, which does affect some of her pronunciation of English words. This has helped him develop conversational English language proficiency or Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) that are average for a fourth grader. However, he struggles with Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) and his writing reflects it. His BICS level of proficiency for cognitive domain taxonomy is at the application level. His linguistic process level is communicating. AK’s BICS internal language skills (comprehension) are at a level where he understands the meaning of what he is listening to in informal situations most of the time. He also is able to read silently for basic comprehension as long as the text is not too complicated. His external language skills (production) in relation to BICS is he is capable to communicating with meaning, feelings, and intentions in social and highly contextualized situations. He can write in expository and creative formats though with basic language.

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