Soft Skills Development with University Students at English Lessons

Abstract

The influence of game-based teaching at English classes with university students for soft skills development has been shown. The purpose of the article is to test experimentally the effectiveness of game-based teaching at English classes with university students for the soft skills development. The theoretical (analysis and synthesis), empirical (questioning, observation, discussion), experimental (pedagogical experiment) methods have been used. The pedagogical experiment helped to evaluate the obtained data. The article results are the following. The concept “soft skills” was established as well as the synonyms “skills for employment”, “people skills”, “non-professional skills”, “extra-professional skills”, “key skills”, “skills for social progress”, “skills of the 21st century”. The eight soft skills that can be developed with university students through educational games at English classes were determined. They were critical thinking, creativity, team management, emotional intelligence, people interaction, conflict management, flexible consciousness and stress resistance. The features of the identified soft skills were described. The influence of game activities to different soft skills was revealed. Different game activities to develop soft skills were shown at English lessons. The effectiveness of game-based teaching to soft skills development was analyzed. The conclusion is the effectiveness of soft skills development based on game-based teaching in English was proved.