Scholarly record
FOREIGN LANGUAGE COURSE IN ENGINEERING STUDENTSВ’SOFT SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
Changes in the society cause changes in the demands on the process and the result of training an engineer. In the beginning of the 20th century a design engineer was needed; the second half of the 20th century called for engineers capable of carrying out a scientific research and applying its results; labor market in the beginning of the 21st century makes a demand on engineers who are both competent in dealing with theoretical and practical tasks that arise from their professional activities and able to work as members of international groups, to present the results of their work to the world professional community, and possessing a whole range of personal qualities and professional skills that enable them to fulfill their potential in the world production field. The article is devoted to the problems of training specialists ready to conduct effective professional activity in the modern world. The authors focus on the components of soft skills which include a certain set of personal qualities, emotional intelligence and communicative competence. Considerable attention is paid to technologies and developing tasks that help to formulate and improve the generic competencies of students while teaching them foreign languages. While creating English textbooks for engineering students the authors should bear in mind developing studentsВ’ soft skills as one of the main goals of educational process. The findings show that students studying English using such textbooks are identified among others having positive learning outcomes, such as: increased self-reliance during teamwork; the ability to effectively overcome learning failures; increased cognitive activity; formed ability to convince and defend their own point of view. Hence, we can conclude that their soft skills are better developed in comparison with the soft skills of the students taught with the help of traditional textbooks.
Publication Impact Profile
Publication details
References11
Brown A., Rudolph H., Educating Engineers for the 21st Century [online]. In: Snook, Chris (Editor); Thorpe, David (Editor). Creating Flexible Learning Environments: Proceedings of the 15th Australasian Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education and the 10th Australasian Women in Engineering Forum. Toowoomba, Qld: Australasian Association for Engineering Education, pp. 103-106, 2004.
Bulankina N.E. Sistema razvivayushchikh zadanii v obuchenii inostrannomu yazyku, Prosveshchenie. Inostrannye yazyki, accessed 5 June 2019, <http://iyazyki.ru/2012/03/sistema-zadanij>
Craig K., Transformational Engineering Education, Mich. St. U. Collegiate Emp.Res. Inst., 2010, accessed 5 June 2019, <http://www.ceri.msu.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2010/07/Transformational-Engineering-Education.pdf>
Lippman L., Ryberg R., Carney R., Moore K., Workforce Connections: Key “soft skills” that foster youth workforce success: toward a consensus across fields. Washington, DC: Child Trends, 56p., 2015.
Ovcharenko V. P., Sal'naya L. K., The potential of the course “Foreign Language” for soft skills forming in engineering education, Filologicheskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki, № 5 (47): Ch. 1, pp. 162-167, 2015.
Ovcharenko V. P., Sal'naya L. K., Vasilovskaya V. N. Universal English: uchebnoe posobie. Taganrog: Izdatel'stvo Yuzhnogo federal'nogo universiteta, 112 p., 2015.
Raitskaya L. What is behind soft skills? Perceptions and stances of university lecturers and students in Russia / L.Raitskaya, E.Tikhonova, M.Balykhin // SGEM International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts. Bulgaria. Vol.5. Issue 3.4, p. 927-935, 2018.
Rojter J., Is engineering education an education for the engineering profession? SEFI 2011: Global Engineering Recognition, Sustainability and Mobility. European Society for Engineering Education, Brussels, pp. 806-811.
Sal'naya L. K., Ovcharenko V. P., Development of engineering students’ soft skills in a foreign language course., Filologicheskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki., № 6-2 (72), pp. 199-202, 2017.
Sidelnik E., Melnik O., Burenko L. Engineering Discourse in the Structure of the ESP Training at Southern Federal University// Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(3): pp. 511-515, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040306
Tikhonova E. Developing soft skills in English for special purposes courses: the case of Russian universities / E.Tikhonova, L.Raitskaya, E.Solovova // SGEM International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts. Bulgaria. Vol. 5. Issue 3.1, pp. 223-231, 2018.
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.