Scholarly record
DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES COURSES: THE CASE OF RUSSIAN UNIVERSITIES
Abstract
Courses of English for special purposes (ESP) tend to focus on fostering communication skills applied to future professional spheres. These skills are the backbone of soft and employability skills, being on the top target list of the university education at large. Although, soft skills alignment with university curricula throughout the world is the state of the art for now, in Russia, the shift towards soft skills is only at the outset. The literature review of soft skills prompted the authors to single out indisputable soft skills (communication skills including oral communication, written communication, presentation skills; social skills interpersonal communication, team work, leadership skills; cognitive skills information skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, and mixed soft skills (mainly related to personal attributes and emotions). With foreign languages, being the most efficient discipline to nurture soft skills, the present research was fulfilled to find out the exposure of ESP course books at Russias universities to soft skills. The ESP coursebooks were sampled through an ESP experts selection with limitations to QS universities in Russia; levels B1-C1; courses for bachelor and master students; full-fledged ESP textbooks (full field coverage); Russian authorship. All exercises were grouped to limit the study to those related to soft skills. The research encompassed two (one structured, one Likert-type) questionnaires to get lecturers and students assessments of relation of the ESP exercises to the selected soft skills. The findings show that with a bias towards drill-like exercises as a weak point in almost all sampled textbooks, there are exercises and tasks successfully imparting soft skills and developing students communication and professional language aptitude.
Publication Impact Profile
Publication details
References13
Cobb E.J., Meixelsperger J., Seitz K.K., Beyond the Classroom: Fostering Soft Skills In Professional LIS Organization, Journal of Library Administration, UK, 2015, vol. 55 / issue 2, pp 114-129.
Goleman D., Leadership that gets results, Harvard Business Review, USA, 2000, vol.78 / issue 2, pp 78–90.
Robles M.M., Executive Perceptions of the Top 10 Soft Skills Needed in Today's Workplace, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, USA, 2012, vol. 75 / issue 4, pp 453-465.
Peterson T.O., Van Fleet D.D., The Ongoing Legacy of R. L. Katz: An Updated Typology of Management Skills, Management Decision, UK, 2004, vol. 42 / issue 10, p 1298.
Blackmore P. A categorization of approaches to occupational analysis, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, UK, 1999, vol. 51 / issue 1, pp 61–78.
Hurrell S.A., Scholarios D., Thompson P., More than a ‘Humpty Dumpty’ Term: Strengthening the Conceptualization of Soft Skills, Economic and Industrial Democracy, USA, 2012, vol. 34 / issue 1, pp 161–82.
Crosbie R., Learning the Soft Skills of Leadership, Industrial and Commercial Training, UK, 2005, vol. 37 / issue 1, pp 45–51.
Kramer R., Hill T., Soft skills: a case for higher education and workplace training, T+D, USA, 2011, vol. 5 / issue 11, pp 16-18.
Jain, V. (2009, February). Importance of soft skills development in education. School of Educators. Retrieved from http://schoolofeducators. com/2009/02/importance-of-soft-skills-development-in-education
Grugulis, I., & Vincent, S., Whose skill is it anyway?: “Soft” skills and polarization, Work, Employment and Society, 2009, vol. 23 / issue 4, pp 597–615. DOI: 10.1177/0950017009344862
Yorke, M., & Harvey, L. (2002). Graduate attributes and their development. New Directions for Institutional Research, USA, 2005, vol. 2005 / issue 128, pp 41- 58. DOI: 10.1002/ir.162
Andrews J., Higson Y., Graduate Employability, ‘Soft Skills’ Versus ‘Hard’ Business Knowledge: A European Study, Higher Education in Europe, UK, vol. 33 / issue 4, pp 411-422, DOI: 10.1080/03797720802522627
Patacsil, Fr., Tablatin, Ch., Exploring the importance of soft and hard skills as perceived by IT internship students and industry: A gap analysis. Journal of Technology and Science Education, UK, 2017, vol. 7 / issue 3, pp 347-368.
View or Download full articleAccess options
SWS access login
Login as SWS Scientific CommitteeLogin as SWS Scientific PartnerLogin as SWS AuthorAuthors and approved SWS contributors will read and export their own linked papers after identity matching by SWS profile, email and SGEM GlobalID.
For librarian assistance: [email protected]
Purchase Instant Access
- Article can be downloaded after successful payment.
- Article may be used according to SWS library access terms.
- Article cannot be redistributed.
