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.

Perceptions of Najran University Students on Utilization and Enhancing Soft Skills and Challenges

“…There is a need for a reevaluation of these methods and strategies. These findings align with results from studies (Fahimirad et al, 2019;Rebele & Pierre, 2019;Kostikova et al, 2021;Malykhin et al, 2021), which affirmed that universities are making efforts, programs, and activities in the field of developing digital skills. However, these measures are still limited in adequately developing soft skills among students.…”

“…Fahimirad et al (2019) emphasized the importance of not limiting the role of faculty members to providing knowledge only but assisting students in acquiring soft skills by integrating them into their teaching practices. Some literature (Succi & Canovi, 2020;Volkova et al, 2020;Tripathy, 2020;Semenova et al, 2021;Kostikova et al, 2021;Malykhim et al, 2021) has also agreed on the necessity of developing soft skills and the relationship between educational practices aimed at developing these skills and the graduates' satisfaction with the soft skills they possess. There is a need for further research to diagnose the current efforts in developing students' soft skills.…”

Evaluation of Students’ Experience on Usage of Interactive Whiteboard for Verbal Presentation in An English Language Classroom

“…After exposure to IWB or PPT, the degree of agreement increased more among the IWB group in all three aspects. Kostikova et. al., (2019) supported the current findings that the usage of educational technology may enhance the instructional program as well as visual presentation skills.…”

English for Border Guards by Means of Problem-Based Technology

“…Many scholars appeal to problem-based learning as they still find it a great potential for the learners. A group of researchers including Kostikova, I., Holubnycha, L., Girich, Z., & Movmyga, N. (2021) emphasize a crucial role of soft skills that are characterized as key skills and skills of the 21st century that should be imparted to the students through using role-playing games in the classroom, through characters' roles in a fictional scenery (I. Kostikova, et al, 2019), as well as through problem based and task-based scenarios.…”