CALP -Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency hereinafter referred to as CALP

With the CALP approach, students have to be able to master the language.

This type of language acquisition and learning is more formal learning than the basic and informal BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills hereinafter referred to as BICS). Teachers will describe students in terms of CALP and BICS  depending on their language adeptness.

Students that develop more in BICS, which is more conversational fluency, may not be strong in CALP because it is more academic in nature and requires more cognitive skills.

For a child to master CALP, they have to be able to learn how to listen, speak, read and write their second language.

CALP is an essential part of academic learning and students need this to be successful in school. It requires learning over time to gain proficiency in specific academic studies that are prerequisites of passing a grade.

The learning curve

It takes between five to seven years to learn CALP and can take up to even ten years if the child does not have teacher and parent support or previous schooling in the development of the language they are trying to learn in. Catching up with their peers in a classroom setting might be more difficult than socializing using BICS.

CALP is more than just being familiar with the content of the vocabulary. It does need certain skills that include classification, comparison, evaluation and making inference.
The difference between BICS and CALP is that BICS is contextualized in specific social situations while CALP is more context reduction. A textbook is used to teach the student and this kind of academic language is necessary for CALP. As the student increases in age the tasks for academic context becomes more reduced.

The more context reduced the academic language becomes, the more demand there will be for cognitive learning. This is why college work is much harder than middle school or high school because new concepts, language and ideas are presented to student simultaneously.

Jim Cummins, who created the Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills approach to language, thinks that in the event of comparing two languages, there is a familiar basic proficiency known as CUP. This means that the same skills and concepts that children learn in their native language will be carried over to the second language.

Conclusion

Teachers that use CALP know that it is far more advanced than BICS. They also know that BICS is easily adaptable and students that have knowledge of Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills are not necessarily good at Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency.