Previous schooling, academic knowledge, and literacy skills that second language learners have in their first language (L1) are also strong determiners (Cummins, 1984, Baker, 1993). Cummins’ framework may be summarized as follows:
§ Regardless of the language in which a person is operating, the thoughts that accompany talking, reading, writing, and listening come from the same central engine. When a person owns two or more languages, there is one integrated source of thought.
§ Bilingualism and multilingualism are possible because people have the capacity to store two or more languages. People can function in two or more languages with relative ease.
§ Information processing skills and educational attainment may be developed through two languages as well as through one language. Cognitive functioning and school achievement may be fed through one monolingual channel or equally successfully through two well developed language channels. Both channels feed the same central processor.
§ The language the student is using in the classroom needs to be sufficiently well developed to be able to process the cognitive challenges of the classroom.
§ Speaking, listening, reading or writing in the first or the second language helps the whole cognitive system to develop. However, if students are made to operate in an insufficiently developed second language, the system will not function well. If students are made to operate in the classroom in a poorly developed second language, the quality and quantity of what they learn from complex materials and produce in oral and written form may be relatively weak.
It will be instructive to to read Professor Cummins’ presentation in which he clarifies the distinction between BICS and CALP: