The potential of task-based language teaching in developing university students’ soft skills

Аннотация

The present article is concerned with the complexity of the development of university students’ soft skills. The terms “hard” and “soft” skills refer to a number of industry-specific and non-industry specific skills that are widely discussed in professional and academic settings and are enclosed in competence-based system of university education in the Russian Federation. The complexity of the matter is shaped by a number of linguistic and non-linguistic factors presented and discussed within the article. As supporting evidence the author provides theoretical implications from the field of Second language acquisition, instructed second language acquisition, neuro-linguistics as well as the results of the author’s own research. The findings regarding the way university students view language learning process and strategies they choose build the objective ground for the author to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of naturalistic and synthetic language teaching approaches in regard with hard skills and soft skills’ development. The article suggests task-based language teaching and task-supported syllabus design as a potential solution to the contradictions and challenges outlined. The author then provides an example of a pedagogical task which can be built within a set university syllabus, supporting the suggestions made with description of the stages that the task can be broken into and rationale for each of them that would when put together guarantee university students’ soft skills development.