Introduction. In today’s world, professionals in any sphere of occupation should have soft skills in order to be in demand in the labour market, to quickly build a career and to achieve personal success. Soft skills involve: skills to communicate, to think creatively and unconventionally, to work in a team and to take responsibility, to organise own time effectively and to adapt quickly in new situations, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to be an owner of social qualities, which are commonly referred to as universal competencies, aimed at to finding optimal balanced solutions in a wide range of daily professional tasks. These skills are not quantifiable and are not generally described in job descriptions, but precisely these skills ensure high efficiency and productivity in any industry. In Western countries, the issues and strategies for soft skills formation in different categories of population have been studied for quite some time. Recently, these problems have become much more common among Russian scientists. The growing relevance of this issue is related to the changes in educational system, the changes in educational and personal guidelines, and the requirements for professional activities. This article is an overview of scientific Russian and foreign publications devoted to the aspects of soft skills development.The aims of the present research are the following: to identify the main trends in the study of soft skills and the possibilities for their acquisition by a person; to find out the similarities and differences between Russian and foreign studies; to determine the most promising scientific inquiry.Methodology and research methods. The study is based on the comparative-historical method. The authors used content-analysis and comparative analysis of documents, articles and results of statistical reports in international databases of Scopus and Web of Science within the period from 1975 to March 2019.Results and scientific novelty. For the first time, the authors conducted retrospective panoramic review of publications on soft skills, systemised additional information concerning the topic under discussion and identified the similarities between existing problems in different countries: lack of appropriate attention to soft skills development when designing educational programmes; insufficient involvement of employers in this process; complexity of the process of observing and evaluating soft skills; difference between the set of competencies acquired by graduates during studies with expectations and demand in the labour market, etc. Diverse ways of soft skills development are offered: organisation of special courses taught out of the subject context (which have already shown their inefficiency), mastering soft skills in parallel with the process of subject-based training or through the potential of particular disciplines. The international scientific community agrees with the statement that educational programmes, in any case, need to be refocused on the soft skills development. However, the general trend is the presentation in most studies of local statistical results, rather narrow professional topics of research and limited time (1–2 academic years). Concerning methodological tools for measuring universal social skills, both Russian and foreign authors prefer case study, classroom research and questionnaires.In general, Russian pedagogical science demonstrates the same vector of development as foreign science, but passes the same stages as other countries with a lag. The only significant difference was found in the research topic: according to the publications of Russian scientists, little attention is given to the problem of migrants’ soft skills. Indeed, the issue of soft skills development is one of the most relevant problems abroad. This can probably be attributed to the specifics of migration processes: for instance, many foreign citizens with completely different cultural and religious mentalities arrive in the European Union; on the contrary, Russia is migrated mainly from former Soviet republics, wherein people are close to the Russians in emotional intelligence.Practical significance. The results of the analytical review allow the scientific and pedagogical community to obtain a comprehensive picture of the main trends in studying the problems of soft skills development and to identify priority directions of further research.

<p><i>The article contains theoretical grounds and experimental verification of using academic role-playing games at classes of Foreign Language in order to form soft skills of students, majoring in non-philological subjects. The purpose of the article is to analyze the effectiveness of using this form of work at university classes for the formation of soft skills of students and to monitor the correlation between these skills.</i></p> <p><i>The methodological basis of the study was the communicative and competence-based approaches in teaching foreign languages. Research methods include questioning, observation, expert assessment and testing. The obtained data were subjected to statistical analysis using Kolmogorov-Smirnov’s test, Pearson’s χ² test and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.</i></p> <p><i>Academic role-playing games have shown their effectiveness as a means of forming soft skills of students, majoring in non-philological subjects, in case of following such fundamental principles as: using the language as an integral system but not as a set of grammatical and lexical phenomena; using language as a means of communication, and, consequently, a teacher`s making educational materials and tasks, focused on the content of communication, but not on the formal characteristics; creating practice-oriented situations in the classroom that train social skills, but not just subject knowledge and skills. The article presents a description of training materials, tasks, methods and forms of work for the formation of students’ soft skills.</i></p>

<p><i>The article contains theoretical grounds and experimental verification of using academic role-playing games at classes of Foreign Language in order to form soft skills of students, majoring in non-philological subjects. The purpose of the article is to analyze the effectiveness of using this form of work at university classes for the formation of soft skills of students and to monitor the correlation between these skills.</i></p> <p><i>The methodological basis of the study was the communicative and competence-based approaches in teaching foreign languages. Research methods include questioning, observation, expert assessment and testing. The obtained data were subjected to statistical analysis using Kolmogorov-Smirnov’s test, Pearson’s χ² test and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.</i></p> <p><i>Academic role-playing games have shown their effectiveness as a means of forming soft skills of students, majoring in non-philological subjects, in case of following such fundamental principles as: using the language as an integral system but not as a set of grammatical and lexical phenomena; using language as a means of communication, and, consequently, a teacher`s making educational materials and tasks, focused on the content of communication, but not on the formal characteristics; creating practice-oriented situations in the classroom that train social skills, but not just subject knowledge and skills. The article presents a description of training materials, tasks, methods and forms of work for the formation of students’ soft skills.</i></p>

Introduction. Today, foreign language competence of a person is a necessary means of active social and professional life. Despite this, quite a lot of young people do not always have the desire to learn foreign languages. This paradox made the motivation to learn foreign languages a popular issue to research worldwide. The article presents the scoping review of international studies devoted to the issue of motivation to learn foreign languages. First of all, it is necessary to understand the research trends in the study of this issue in general, and to determine factors, which influence the lack of students' interest to learn foreign languages in particular.The aim of the present research is to outline the current focus trends and to define the gaps in international research papers aimed at investigating the issue of motivation for foreign languages learning.Methodology and research methods. The methodological framework of the current research is based on the qualitative content analysis of relevant empirical research on this issue from the periodicals indexed by the international databases Scopus and Web of Science over the last 15 years. This review will provide an understanding of the degree of knowledge of the analysed issues at the international level.Results. The research works on the issues of motivation for foreign languages learning were divided into two main categories: the research works concentrated on inner - academic and professional factors, and the works which deal with the outer - social factors of influence. Within these groups, the existing research trends and the most promising research areas were identified (for instance, the influence of peers on the motivational sphere of students). Amongst the numerous works investigating external (socio-economic) factors of influence, there is insufficient research on the influence of macro-political and macro-economic factors on the motivation for learning languages (for instance, foreign languages learning preferences). The research outcomes will contribute to understanding the factors, which influence the students' lack of interest in learning foreign languages.The scientific novelty is in the originality of the demonstrated review, which includes many scientific papers performed by scientists from all over the world and based on various research procedures. In the review, the geographical principle of data selection was not used and the publication date was not taken into account. The main selection criterion was a research paper to be published in a journal peer-reviewed by international databases over the last 15 years.Such a principle was necessary to understand research trends in the issue of motivation for mastering a foreign language competence and to determine similar (or specific) factors for different countries, which cause students' lack of interest in learning foreign languages.Practical significance. The results of the obtained analysis will give understanding of the reasons for the lack of students' motivation to study foreign languages. Moreover, it will help to find a solution to this international challenge.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed social and educational environment, which affected the educational process participants and the research directions. The article shows the changes in the direction of studies dealing with the issues of university students` foreign languages learning motivation, published in 2021. Researching is still aimed at studying the online environment and its potential. Its high potential to develop the motivation is stated, but the lack of participants` experience of its using prevents its full acceptance so far. The problems of maintaining personal interaction between a teacher and students; overcoming stress and anxiety; adaptation to the virtual learning environment and their impact on the motivation are of research interest. Another part of the research works is traditionally devoted to the components of educational motivation, strategies for their managing, etc. The results of the analysis will help to understand how well the problem has been studied and determine the direction of future research.