Keyword: «universal skills»

The article considers discussion as an educational technology which facilitates the development of law students’ universal skills. These universal skills comprise thinking competency, interactional competence, self competence. Being involved in discussion within the framework of an intellectual and rhetoric competition, students solve problem tasks. Thus, students’ research skills are improved in unconventional situations.

A modern professional, regardless of the field in which he will work, must combine a whole range of competences, both highly professional and supra-professional, universal, so-called "soft" skills. In addition to deep professional training, the future employee should be trained in the rules and principles of communication with colleagues, managers, subordinates as representatives of the internal audience, partners, investors, representatives of government regulatory authorities as external groups of the organization. Obviously, the development of these skills is most successful within the framework of real interaction and information transfer during professional internship, but a certain experience of business communications can be obtained when studying specialized disciplines in accordance with the approved curricula of the main educational programs. This determines the relevance of considering the experience of developing business communication skills in the higher education system. The aim of this study is to analyze the characteristics of the business communication skills development among students in the context of pedagogical discipline, on the one hand, and students' perception of didactic units provided by the discipline's work program, on the other. The empirical basis of the work was made up of student essays as a means of current control on the discipline "Business Communications". Research methodology: statistical analysis of the distribution of essay topics within the discipline "Business Communications" chosen by students of Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev-KAI. Statistical analysis of the collected data allowed us to identify that students are most interested in topics related to communication with people with disabilities (31%), general communication issues in the professional field (26%) and self-presentation during job interviews (24%). The theoretical significance of the research lies in the in-depth characterization of the essay as a pedagogical means of studying the main issues of communication in the professional field in the format of independent student work. The data obtained must be considered in order to improve the effectiveness of teaching the subject by focusing on topics that are of interest to students, due to their relevance or lack of coverage at the moment.