- International Fees
International fees are typically 3.25 times the domestic tuition. Exact cost will be calculated upon completion of registration.
Course Overview
This course provides students with the writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills required to succeed in BCIT's other Professional English Language Development courses. You will practice grammar skills and language structures useful for technical communication, including writing and speaking about your background, writing formal definitions and descriptions, summarizing, and making presentations. NOTE: Seat availability is limited and registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis only. We do not guarantee or reserve seats for students with no exceptions. Please also be mindful that taking the COMM 0015 test and receiving a placement does NOT guarantee students a seat for a course in the next available term/schedule. Financial aid is also available for this course. Your application must be submitted NO LATER THAN THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS.
Prerequisite(s)
- For admission into COMM 0003, students must have completed ONE of the following: (1) COMM 0015 (placement at the COMM 0003 level) within the past 12 months OR (2) Completion of COMM 0071 within the last 2 months OR (3) CLB/LINC or CELPIP score of 6 or better in both reading and writing within the last 12 months OR (4) IELTS (academic format only) of 5.0 or better in both reading and writing within the last 24 months OR (5) Completion of ELSK 520 through the VCC Pathway program OR (6) Completion of ISEP Level 4 with 50% or better in each course (if taken before January 2021) OR (7) TAE 3 with 50% (if taken after January 2021) OR (8) Completion of LEAP 5 through the Langara LEAP program OR (9) TOEFL overall score of 35 or better within the last 24 months OR (10) CAEL score of 35 or better within the last 12 months. Please check our website for other placement level(s) if your scores do not meet the prerequisites for COMM 0003: https://www.bcit.ca/computing-academic-studies/communication/professional-english-language-development/placement/ .
Credits
0.0
Domestic fees
$679.26 - $693.92 See individual course offerings below for actual costs.
Learning Outcomes
Writing skills
- Organize ideas using some pre-writing techniques
- Draft, revise and edit paragraphs
- With the help of correction symbols, identify common grammatical components and correct identified errors
- Use concrete content vocabulary
- Write descriptive and expository paragraphs on a familiar or concrete topic
- Use personal experience to write paragraphs
- Review and practice the basic components of effective technical paragraph writing and some multi-paragraph assignments
- Make some adjustment for audience, purpose and intended effects
Speaking skills
- Participate in a variety of group or paired activities
- Deliver 2 or 3 individual presentations (description, interview and process)
- Organize thoughts and ideas in terms of purpose, sequence, language
- Respond to questions and feedback in familiar and predictable contexts
- Demonstrate the use of some basic presentation skills (body language, timing, eye contact)
- Express and/or explain ideas, opinions and feelings about familiar topics with rare reliance on re-wording or rephrasing
- Use a varying range of concrete vocabulary and some idiomatic expressions for use in classroom discussions on general topics
- Have a good range of technical language in their particular field
- Use a limited range of structures. (Errors, while frequent, do not prevent communication. Pronunciation, however, may impede understanding.)
Reading skills
- Comprehend selected authentic texts and/or supported materials of moderate length (newspaper and magazine articles and manuals) within a less familiar context
- Analyze sections of texts for main ideas, supporting details, purpose and meaning, distinguish fact from opinion
- Use context, title, headings and format to predict and determine information about a text
- Adjust reading rate according to task (skimming and scanning a variety of passages)
- Comprehend high frequency content words
- Accept some ambiguity in reading passages
- Use context clues to guess meaning of unfamiliar words. Use affixes and roots in decoding
- Use a monolingual learners' dictionary
Listening skills
- Understand to a significant degree most conversations on a variety of normal general topics at a normal rate of speech
- Understand selected information delivered through a variety of broadcast media (radio, television, video )
- Distinguish between formal informal register in speech with some effectiveness
- Understand most natural speech containing a variety of structures, with some dependence on repetition
- Understand sufficient concrete and abstract vocabulary, idioms, and expressions to follow classroom discussions on general topics
- Understand ideas, opinions, and feeling about familiar topics and activities and technical and conceptual language related to their specialization
- Follow instructions with some repetition from instructor
- Understand group discussion and conversations 75% of the time
Effective as of Fall 2003
Related Programs
Technical Communication Skills for EAL Students 2 (COMM 0003) is offered as a part of the following programs:
- Indicates programs accepting international students.
School of Business + Media
- Business Fundamentals
Associate Certificate Full-time
Course Offerings
Winter 2026
Below are two offerings of COMM 0003 for the Winter 2026 term.
CRN 19209
Dates
Feb 28 - Apr 12 Loading
- CRN 19209
- $679.26 Domestic fees
Class meeting times
Duration
7 weeks
Instructor
Chad Fryer
Course outline
Important information
- International fees are typically 3.25 times the domestic tuition. Exact cost will be calculated upon completion of registration.
- ** IMPORTANT INFORMATION - READ CAREFULLY BEFORE REGISTERING ** The TUITION portion of this course ($633.81) is FREE for Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents. However, ALL students will still need to pay the ancillary SERVICE FEES ($45.45) such as Student Association fee, Student ID Card fee, etc. If you are registering through the online system and are exempt from payment of the TUITION portion, a fee waiver will be applied to your account within 2 business days. Please log into your my.bcit.ca account after the two business days to make payment for the service fees only. BCIT must receive the service fees payment within 2 business days from the time your account was adjusted. ** THIS PAYMENT IS REQUIRED TO SECURE A SEAT IN THE COURSE. ** If your tuition has not been waived after 2 business days, please call Student Information and Enrolment Services at 604-434-1610 for assistance with service fees payment. We CANNOT guarantee your seat back into the course once you have been dropped from the course for non-payment. For payment options, please check our website at: www.bcit.ca/financial-services/students/payment-options-at-bcit/. You will also need to check course prerequisites before registering. Please email your test scores/transcript and BCIT student number to PELD@bcit.ca as department approval is required to register for this course. This is a BLENDED course with classes held at the DOWNTOWN campus every Saturdays from 08:30 to 16:30 and ONLINE every Sundays from 08:30 to 16:30. Students are required to attend classes on both days. Please log into learn.bcit.ca using your BCIT student email and password on the first day of your online class. You will NOT be able to log into the course before the start date.
Status
CRN 19210
Dates
Feb 27 - Apr 17 Loading
- CRN 19210
- $693.92 Domestic fees
Class meeting times
Duration
7 weeks
Instructor
TBD
Course outline
Course outline TBD — see Learning Outcomes in the interim.
Important information
- International fees are typically 3.25 times the domestic tuition. Exact cost will be calculated upon completion of registration.
- ** IMPORTANT INFORMATION - READ CAREFULLY BEFORE REGISTERING ** The TUITION portion of this course ($633.81) is FREE for Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents. However, ALL students will still need to pay the ancillary SERVICE FEES ($60.11) such as Student Association fee, Student ID Card fee, etc. If you are registering through the online system and are exempt from payment of the TUITION portion, a fee waiver will be applied to your account within 2 business days. Please log into your my.bcit.ca account after the two business days to make payment for the service fees only. BCIT must receive the service fees payment within 2 business days from the time your account was adjusted. ** THIS PAYMENT IS REQUIRED TO SECURE A SEAT IN THE COURSE. ** If your tuition has not been waived after 2 business days, please call Student Information and Enrolment Services at 604-434-1610 for assistance with service fees payment. We CANNOT guarantee your seat back into the course once you have been dropped from the course for non-payment. For payment options, please check our website at: www.bcit.ca/financial-services/students/payment-options-at-bcit/. You will also need to check course prerequisites before registering. Please email your test scores/transcript and BCIT student number to PELD@bcit.ca as department approval is required to register for this course. This is an IN-PERSON course with classes held every Mondays, Wednesdays, AND Fridays from 08:30 to 12:30 at the BURNABY campus. Students are required to attend classes on all three days.
Status
Programs and courses are subject to change without notice.