FORMING SOFT SKILLS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS BY MEANS OF ACADEMIC
ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AT FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES
Abstract
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.
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.
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.