As students progress through the stages of second language acquisition, they develop two types of language proficiency: social and academic, often referred to as BICS and CALP.
BICS
BICS is basic interpersonal communication skills. This means social language skills that guide students in developing social relationships and in engaging in casual face-to-face conversations. It is casual language that missionaries come home being able to communicate. These conversations are typically composed of shorter sentences, simpler vocabulary, and syntactical and grammatical structures that relate to familiar and receptive topics. It typically takes two years to develop in a second language and can be taught using modeling, role-playing, prompting, and scripting.
CALP
CALP is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. These are language skills that relate to literacy, cognitive development and academic development in the classroom. This includes complex and technical academic language which can take up to seven years for students to develop. When CALP skills are developed in one’s first language foster development of CALP in a second language, this can be developed by pre-teaching, using concrete objects, pairing students with bilingual classmates with greater proficiency.
5 Stages of Language Acquisition:
1. preproduction or silent period 2. telegraphic or early production period- cat is gato, identifying objects and specific items or actions. 3. interlanguage and intermediate fluency period 4. extensions and expansions period 5.enrichment period 6. independent learning period