Keyword: «soft skills»

The relevance of the research is due to the need to develop modern educational technologies for teaching foreign languages at a technical university. There is an obvious objective necessity to update the content, methods and principles of foreign language teaching, their orientation to the development of socially and professionally important skills in a dynamically changing world. Such interpersonal, communicative and analytical skills are commonly called "soft skills" in modern scientific and pedagogical literature; in the context of this research, "soft skills" are interpreted and defined as "flexible skills". As a result of the work carried out, the purpose of the research was realized – to study and interpret the concepts, definitions, content of the term "soft skills" (flexible skills), to determine the methodological justification and the potentials of their integration into the structure of students' universal communicative foreign language competence in the process of implementing educational "flexible skills" (soft skills) development technology into foreign language teaching at a technical university. The structure and principles of educational technology are described, taking into account the psychological and didactic, organizational and methodological, evaluative and reflexive peculiarities of "flexible skills" (soft skills) development in the given article. The scientific and methodological potential of the issue under research in the framework of the discipline "Foreign language" in a technical university is determined. The theoretical significance of the article is related to the author's interpretation of the term "soft skills" (flexible skills) as a complex of supra-professional skills, they guarantee a comfortable interpersonal interaction, they are responsible for successful academic results, obviously increase life comfort, and ensure the effective students' career development. The leading research methods: the case method and the project method are used in a new combination. It has been scientifically proved that their joint use application as the case-project method provides a synergetic educational effect by involving students in research activities in the process of studying specific cases together with successful situation examples of implementing flexible skills (soft skills). At the same time, the foreign language communicative skills are improving during the project implementation. The practical significance of the research is provided by the results of the article, which are presented in various formats corresponding to the pedagogical, psychological and methodological goals of integrating the soft skills (flexible skills) development technology into the educational process of teaching foreign languages at a technical university.

This article defines the concept of soft skills, talks about the importance and necessity of developing these skills among students in the 21st century. There are five main skills: self-organization, communicative communication (verbal and non-verbal), research skills, social skills (work in groups, in pairs, communication with teachers and students), thinking skills (critical thinking, metacognitive thinking, etc.). The article describes certain strategies for developing these skills in teaching English.