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Calps: Basic Interpersonal Communication System

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a. BICs—Basic Interpersonal Communication System
i. Everyday talk ii. Basic interpersonal communication skills iii. In the stages of language development—early production and speech emergence. iv. Fluency takes 1-3 years
v. Context imbedded vi. Survival language
b. CALPs—Cognitive Academic Language
i. Academic ii. Cognitive academic proficiency iii. In the stages of language development—Intermediate fluency and advanced fluency. iv. Complete fluency takes up to a lifetime
v. Fewer non-verbal cues vi. 5 Cs
1. Communication
2. Conceptualization
3. Critical thinking
4. Context
5. Culture
c. Understanding BICs and CALPs is important for many different reasons. First BICs and CALPs divides the understanding of language into two different categories, each with their own components and sets of importance. There are many different processes ones goes through to learn a new language, and Cummins believe these processes are the same no matter what language one is attempting to speak. ELL learners will go through a …show more content…

Cummins came up with his notion of BICs and CALPs though his study of a series of psychological reports done on ELL students. Educators were concerned about the ELL student performance and did not understand why children who gave the appearance of being fluent in English, were performing so poorly on exams; resulting in the assumption that they may have some type of learning disability. Cummins explained in the video we watched that the fact that they were from a non-English-speaking background often went overlooked. In addition, in these types of tests, these students performed much higher in verbal testing than non-verbal. Cummins quickly picked up on this gap. Cummins re-analyzed the data the school had and looked at how long they have been in the school district in relation to proficiency, and closeness to grade norms. With this soon came Cummins’s way of placing a distinction between basic “survival” communication vs academic communication and

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