Along this same vein, while we can see that while Amara did progress in her language competency between Junior High and High School, the type of English she had learned to speak during this time served little or no purpose in an academic setting. In other words, her day-to-day interaction with an English speaking populace had given her what is often referred to as Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, which only enable a language learner to communicate in a conversational setting (Cummins, 1979). Unfortunately, Amara still lacked a more cognitively demanding Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, which, just as it sounds, is the necessary language one needs to succeed in an academic setting (write essays, read text books, listen to lectures, etc.). It is estimated that such a proficiency takes a minimum of five years from the onset of exposure (three years more than Basic), meaning Amara would have just been leaving high school when she reached an adequate proficiency level of this kind.…
