A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

"...the social-emotional environment in which the basic conditions for learning
can occur and in whidh the linguistic and cognitive development in the first
language will support the same in the second language."
(Cummns & Swain, 1986:105)

Cummins differentiates between context-embedded Bbsic Interpersonal
Communicative Ski Id' (BICS) and context-reduced "CognitiveAcademic
Language Proficiency (CALP). Ac∞rding to Cummins, CALP refers 'to those
aspects of language which are closely related to the development of literacy
skills in L1 and L2' (Cumnnins, 11980:177). The fiteracy-related aspects of
language competence were identified as vocabulary COirceptiaI knowledge,
metalinguistic awareness and the abil tyto deal Withdecontextualised spoken
and written language.

While most children develop center-embedded 'B I CS' with relative ease,
context-reduced 'CALP' is said to take Iongertodevelopand s not developed to
the same degree by all chldfen. It s the CALP₁ thecognitive and academic
abilities that take on importance in formal learning situations where they are
closely related to children’s ablity to read and write. Cummins suggested that
∞gn tive maturity was an asset in dealing with the context-reduced activities
that are Characteristicof schod learning and that first Ilarguage literacy-related
instruction was associated with improved second language performance in
literacy related tasks (Cummins & Swain, 1986)

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