Keyword: «soft skills»

The development of soft skills is a priority in the modern era of mass communications. The presence of mass communication mechanisms: social networks, makes it possible to exchange information, teach, promote a personal brand and provide various services. These circumstances place significant demands on the availability of soft skills. Such requirements are valid for students not only of humanities, but also of engineering specialties since full provision of information about their activities will improve the position of the speaker and achieve consistently high communication skills. The concept of soft skills is quite broad and can be interpreted by students through the prism of everyday experience rather than academic experience. This circumstance can lead to an incorrect perception of the soft skills requirements that the industry and possible employers place on graduates of engineering universities. This study is aimed at identifying the level of awareness of engineering students about soft skills. Also, one of the goals of the study was to identify the role of teaching materials and the use of such materials by students in practice in assessing the main components of soft skills. As a research method, a survey method was used, which was aimed at identifying the most important components of soft skills in the opinion of students. Next, as a training component, we chose the TED talks resource, which clearly illustrates the successful use of soft skills. After studying the training material and group discussion, the students were given the task of preparing a public speech as a team. Soft-skills components from the training materials were selected as evaluation criteria. After completing the task, students were asked to take the survey again and adjust their assessments of the important components of the soft skills considering the experience gained. Data from the two surveys were analyzed and compared. The results of the study can contribute to the formation of soft skills and will improve the quality of the educational process for non-humanitarian students.