Creating Activities for Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) in the Language Learning Classroom

Introduced by the famous language expert Jim Cummins, Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are the language skills that are required for day to day communications such as in classroom, in bus, in playground, at parties, talking to your friend or talking over telephone and other situations. BICS are basically taught to preschoolers and toddlers for helping them to interact in everyday situations. However, BICS are used only for everyday social situations, not for academic purposes.

As a language teacher, you can create certain activities for BICS in your classroom to improve the communication skills of students. These interactions are context embedded as they depend upon the social context. It does not require any special language skills.

ESL teachers know the importance of teaching language skills to be used in variety of social situations. They should help their students to interact in both formal and informal settings. Students should be taught specific social skills such as greeting people, to apologize, to give and receive compliments, making polite requests and more. Besides, students should be able to understand nonverbal language, voice tones and volumes that they would come across in different classroom settings. Students must be taught what are considered ‘shocking expressions’ in that particular language.

Learning expressions for good social manners are very important part of learning a language. ESL teachers can create certain class activities which teach students:

• to answer the telephone
• how to receive and give compliments
• to ask directions
• shopping in the market
• making a small conversation with strangers
• to thank someone for something

To teach all these social skills, you can make use of activities to such as

• role playing
• teacher modeling
• peer modeling
• showing videos
• using audio CDs

These are very good tools to teach BICS. For instance, teach your students to observe their peers for models for correct social behavior. Select certain students to enact plays to show the use of appropriate language in a certain situation. These plays are very effective in teaching the usage of language in a certain situation.

Create certain real situations in your class to teach the correct usage of language in that situation. Right from the first day of your class, you can make your students practice phrases such as “good morning" and “goodbye” by greeting teachers and classmates. Students should be encouraged to expect such behavior.

You can easily teach students more BICS by

• developing survival vocabulary
• playing simple games
• engaging in face-to-face interactions
• practicing oral language exercises
• replying to lower language questions

English language learners are encouraged to be with English language natives to learn maximum BICS. They can help the learners to learn day to day expressions without actually teaching them. In addition, observing body language and facial expressions are also important part of learning BICS.