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

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.