Developing students’ soft skills through the elective course “English for cross-cultural communication”

Abstract

Importance. The planned transition to new Federal State Educational Standards of the 4th generation has necessitated a revision of the range of competencies developed by students while mastering the educational program in general and in the process of studying different courses. Particular attention has to be paid to the formation of universal competencies, or soft skills, which are necessary for a modern specialist to solve professional problems. To ensure the implementation of this process, Russian universities are introducing additional elective and optional disciplines, as a result of studying which students are expected to acquire a certain set of universal competencies. The purpose of this study is to identify what soft skills can be developed through the elective course “English for cross-cultural communication”.Materials and Methods. The research is carried out using theoretical methods – literature review on the research topic, analysis, comparison and generalization of the results obtained, and experimental methods – a survey of 2nd year undergraduate students. The objectives of the survey include identifying the degree of students’ understanding of the essence of soft skills, identifying priority competencies and receiving feedback on the course content.Results and Discussion. The existing approaches to defining soft skills and their classification are studied. An analysis of the literature on the research problem reveals the lack of a unified terminology, multiple interpretations of the term “soft skills” and classifications of soft skills. An attempt has been made to describe the content of the course “English for cross-cultural communication” in terms of developing soft skills necessary for a modern professional. The types of tasks integrated into the content of the course and their correlation with soft skills formed through one or another type of in-class or out-of-class activities are considered.Conclusion. It is found that the elective course “English for cross-cultural communication” has great potential in terms of increasing the general cultural level of students and developing a wide range of soft skills: communication, cooperation, critical thinking, creativity, empathy, leadership and the ability to work in a team.