Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Soft Skills by Means

of ICT in Ukrainian Universities

Natalia V. Bondar

, Tetiana V. Konovalenko

1 a

and Ivan G. Riznitskii

Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, 20 Hetmanska Str., Melitopol, 72300, Ukraine

State University of Economics and Technology, 5 Stepana Tilhy Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50006, Ukraine

Keywords:

Hard Skills, E-Learning, Soft Skills, Online Technology Analysis, Distance Learning.

Abstract:

The aims of this paper are to overview the main aspects of soft skills development by means of ICT in higher

education Ukraine. The ways of future foreign language teachers’ soft skills development are identiﬁed within

the core and selective parts of the curriculum of Bachelor’s level. The article discusses the essence of soft

skills, their difference from hard skills and the main recent tendencies of their development by means of ICT

in Ukrainian higher education. The idea of creating educational-professional hub and its programme aimed at

future foreign language teachers’ soft skills development is outlined.

1 INTRODUCTION

Signiﬁcant changes in science, economics and soci-

ety for the last two decades have inﬂuenced the de-

velopment of the education sector, setting the objec-

tive of training employable professionals who are able

to respond to today’s challenges and adapt to various

working conditions. Recently, in Ukrainian higher ed-

ucation the so-called soft skills and their importance

for the employability of graduates are frequently dis-

cussed. According to the opinion polls, most employ-

ers prefer a candidate who has developed soft skills,

while purely professional skills (hard skills) are of

primary importance for only 20% of the employers

(Mitchell, 2008). The reason for this is that having

professional knowledge and skills (hard skills) is not

enough to perform a wide range of professional tasks.

A person must have the universal skills needed in any

activity: the ability to think critically, ﬁnd the nec-

essary information, work in a team, be resistant to

stress, rationally plan his or her time, etc.

The European Commission declared that “a large

number of Europeans, particularly highly-qualiﬁed

young people, work in jobs that do not match their

talents and aspirations. At the same time, 40%

of European employers report that they cannot ﬁnd

people with the right skills to grow and innovate”

(ec.europa.eu, 2016). Council Recommendation on

Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (EC, 2018)

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4867-324X

was suggested as the way to help more people “ac-

quire the core set of skills necessary to work and live

in the 21st century with a special focus on promot-

ing entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mind-sets

and skills” (ec.europa.eu, 2016). The issue is espe-

cially relevant to Ukrainian context as there are more

and more employers focusing on European standards

and requirements for employees’ hard and soft skills.

In Ukraine, the ﬁrst sociological investigation of

digital skills demonstrated that 53% of Ukrainian

population are below the average mark, 15.1% of

them do not have any digital skills at all (Diia, 2019).

Digital skills are soft skills for all except IT special-

ists; moreover they can help to develop a range of

other soft skills.

Such skills will be useful not only in professional

activities, but also in everyday life, and will help to

better arrange the living space, solve various life is-

sues as well as establish relationships with others.

The study of the soft skills development has become

increasingly popular among scientists. On the one

hand, scientists and managers who are engaged in

business research and looking for the ways to train

competitive workers discuss the feasibility of soft

skills development. On the other hand, the impor-

tance of soft skills development is considered not only

as a signiﬁcant advantage in the business sphere, but

also in any other ﬁeld, including education.

Any teacher must have his or her soft skills devel-

oped as they interact with various people every day:

students, parents, colleagues. It is important for them

Bondar, N., Konovalenko, T. and Riznitskii, I.

Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Soft Skills by Means of ICT in Ukrainian Universities.

DOI: 10.5220/0010932400003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 425-433

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

425

to be able to build relationships with others, present

themselves and their ideas, have leadership qualities.

The teachers face unpredictable situations every day,

so they are expected to act effectively both inside and

outside the school. The ability to efﬁciently behave

in both typical and critical situations is one of the

characteristic features of the developed soft skills of a

teacher (Konovalenko and Goncharova, 2018). New

trends in education lead to changes and the search

for new models of future teachers’ training, which fo-

cuses on the student-centredness, forms the image of a

new generation teacher, teacher-facilitator, colleague,

educator, project manager, communicator, researcher,

innovator. Without developed soft skills it will be im-

possible for a teacher to perform this role.

The most prominent feature of the modern educa-

tional process is the active involvement of ICT in the

classroom, which is undoubtedly an extreme need of

the information society. The continuing development

of digital technologies provides teachers with unlim-

ited opportunities for the implementing, development

and use of new methods and technologies in the edu-

cational process, helping to improve it, adapt to new

labour market requirements, and to make the process

of acquiring knowledge by students more engaging

and productive.

The use of ICT as one of the tools in the process

of future foreign language teachers’ soft skills devel-

opment has not been revealed in the researches pro-

foundly enough. There are a lot of research and sci-

entiﬁc publications on the use of ICT in the process

of learning foreign languages in higher educational

institutions or secondary schools. Nevertheless, the

use of ICT as a means of soft skills development has

not been sufﬁciently studied, thus the topic of our re-

search is relevant in the context of recent world events

and challenges the system of higher education faces

today.

The aim of the article is to review the experience

of future foreign languages teachers’ soft skills de-

velopment and to outline the effective ways of their

development by means of ICT in Ukrainian universi-

ties.

2 METHODS

The methodology of our investigation is presented

with the standard procedure of action research as it is

one of the most dynamic, ﬂexible and effective ways

of implementing new ideas in the education sphere.

According to Mertler (Mertler, 2018) we are fol-

lowing such stages:

• Identifying and limiting the topic

• Gathering information

• Reviewing the related literature

• Developing a research plan

• Implementing the plan and collecting the data

• Analysing the data

• Developing an action plan

• Sharing and communicating the results

• Reﬂecting on the research process.

This paper presents the beginning stage of the

study and action research cycle. So, it reveals the

topic relevance, discusses the world and Ukrainian

experience within the issue, describes the research

plan and the ﬁrst data obtained.

This research describes the attempt to accumulate

the recent experience of educational community to

face the challenges of new educational environment,

to elicit what students and university teachers felt and

how they reacted to emerging factors, to synthesise

and communicate issues to be solved, and thereby

to stimulate implementing the best practices of soft

skills development by means of ICT. We suggest ex-

panding the lens of focus from individual effective

practices of university teachers to common use and

creating the new model of future foreign languages

teachers’ soft skills development in the process of

their training in Ukrainian universities.

We are going to involve all categories of stake-

holders into our research as it is necessary to know the

needs of students, university teachers, university man-

agement, their future school students, school admin-

istration, parents and authorities responsible for edu-

cation on national level. Thus, besides of literature

review, practical experience study, we need qualita-

tive and quantitative data as well as mixed methods to

engage the stakeholders to eliciting and synthesising

all relevant data and create the model of future foreign

languages teachers’ soft skills development by means

of ICT.

In this article we reveal our experience of ﬁnding

the answers to such research questions:

1. What is ‘soft skills’?

2. How have they been changing and what inﬂuences

their change?

3. Which soft skills are especially important for fu-

ture foreign language teachers?

4. What are the best practices for the development of

soft skills?

5. What issues have not been solved yet?

6. How can the use of ICT contribute to the develop-

ment of soft skills?

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

426

The answers to these questions will help us to col-

lect the necessary data and start designing the model

of future foreign languages teachers’ soft skills devel-

opment by means of ICT relevant to Ukrainian higher

education.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The concept of soft skills has become an integral part

of the labour market in many areas of the economy,

and there are some other closely related terms.

Cinque (Cinque, 2016), researching the develop-

ment of skills which we call ‘soft skills’, provides a

list of terms used by different organizations in differ-

ent periods:

Analysing these terms, we can see that they con-

tain the words ‘future’, ‘life’, ‘social’, ‘society’, i.e.

the presence of these skills is seen as a guaran-

tee of the success in the life of a particular person,

which leads to the success in society. And the verbs

‘transversal’ and ‘transferable’ indicate the universal

nature of these skills, the ability to use them in vari-

ous activities. The term ‘soft skills for talent’ empha-

sizes that the development of soft skills gives a person

more opportunities to realize his or her natural abili-

ties, and as a result increases success in the career life

and promotes self-realization, which in turn is the key

to harmonious and happy life.

The Oxford Dictionary deﬁnes ‘soft skills’ as

“personal qualities of a person that contribute to suc-

cessful communication with other people: the abil-

ity to work together, enthusiasm, emotional intelli-

gence” (www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, 2021).

At the same time, life skills are deﬁned as “skills nec-

essary or extremely useful for managing daily life:

the ability to work in a team, solve problems, liter-

acy and arithmetic skills. They also include such vi-

tal skills as the ability to cook or use a washing ma-

chine” (www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, 2021).

Thus, although the terms ‘soft skills’ and ‘life skills’

are closely related, there is a difference between them.

The use of the term ‘life skills’ is more acceptable

when we talk about the formation of skills necessary

for a person primarily for independent living, adap-

tation to living conditions, solving life and everyday

problems. While the concept of ‘soft skills’ is more

often used in the context of training a person for fu-

ture professional activities.

The concepts of soft skills and hard skills origi-

nated in the 1960s and 1970s in military affairs and

were expressed in the doctrine of “Military Training

Design Systems”: hard skills were used to denote

machine skills and soft skills – to work with people

and papers. Subsequently, the terms began to be ac-

tively used in business. Robles (Robles, 2012) con-

sidered the need to develop soft skills in students as

one of the important factors in preparing them for suc-

cessful business communication. Mitchell (Mitchell,

2008) wrote about the importance of integrating soft

skills into business school curricula, which would

contribute to the further successful employment of

students and their competitiveness in the labour mar-

ket of the 21st century. There is a growing talk about

the need to develop soft skills in any profession and

emphasise the need to include the development of soft

skills in educational programs as one of the manda-

tory components, along with training for specialised

professional skills.

Thus, the modern education faces the necessity of

training primarily teachers who have well-developed

hard and soft skills, and who are able to contribute

to the further effective development of these skills

of their future students. That is why in the Reg-

ulations on Accreditation of Study Programmes in

Higher Education, one of the important sub-criteria

(sub-criterion 2.6) is the following: “The study pro-

gramme envisages the development of soft skills in

students that meet stated objectives” (NAQA, 2019),

which will help graduates succeed in their workplace.

The ratio of soft skills and hard skills may dif-

fer for individual professions. There are professions

that provide accurate calculations, drawings, exper-

iments, and in these professions the hard skills are

more important, because the level of their develop-

ment mostly inﬂuences the result of the task fulﬁlled.

Whereas the professions which are directly related to

communication with people, planning, trade, art, re-

quire more focus on soft skills. However, it should

be noted that, for example, researchers in a laboratory

with advanced communication skills will have a bet-

ter chance of professional growth, as they will be able

to present themselves and their ideas better than their

colleagues, whose soft skills are less developed.

When compared with the hard skills, the soft skills

are based more on personal values and in response

Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Soft Skills by Means of ICT in Ukrainian Universities

427

to certain actions the models of human behaviour are

engaged. The development of soft skills is slower and

reaching a certain level is not guaranteed. Soft skills

under certain conditions have a tendency to reverse

development, while hard skills have almost no such

tendency (Dlugunovych, 2014).

There are many universal skills that may be

needed in a profession and for life in general. A

study by Simona (Simona, 2015) among teachers in

the UK, Denmark, Spain, Romania and Portugal iden-

tiﬁed such life skills as:

• Numeracy skills

• Literacy and communication

• ICT skills

• Interpersonal skills

• Use of foreign languages

• Entrepreneurship

• Job seeking

• Learning to learn

Most of these life skills can be attributed to soft

skills. Among the proposed list, teachers had to

choose the most important in their opinion. The study

found that the most desirable skills to be included in

school curricula were: literacy and communication

for Danish, British, Romanian and Spanish teachers,

ICT skills for Portuguese and Romanian respondents,

interpersonal skills for British respondents, learning

to learn for Danish Spanish and Portuguese teachers,

use of foreign languages for Danish respondents. The

most acceptable means to implement the involvement

of these ﬂexible skills in the curriculum, according

to the author, are the method of case-study and role-

playing games (Simona, 2015).

The World Economic Forum in 2015 highlighted

the 10 most important qualities needed in 2020 for

successful employment, the so-called Davos concepts

(Lazorenko and Krasnenko, 2019):

1. Complex problem solving

2. Critical thinking

3. Creativity

4. People management

5. Coordinating with others

6. Emotional intelligence

7. Judgement and decision making

8. Service orientation

9. Negotiation

10. Cognitive ﬂexibility

This list has been transformed to a shorter one, so

there are four competences on it now (Lazorenko and

Krasnenko, 2019):

1. Critical thinking

2. Communication

3. Creativity

4. Collaboration

Each profession requires greater development of

certain soft skills. Thus, in the typical program

“Methodology of teaching English” for future teach-

ers of English, the need to create opportunities for

the development of essential life skills (which corre-

sponds to our understanding of soft skills) that tran-

scend subject boundaries, is emphasised. Accord-

ing to the programme, these important skills include

(Bevz et al., 2009):

1. Communication

2. Collaboration

3. Creativity

4. Critical thinking

5. Information literacy

6. Intercultural awareness

7. Problem-solving

8. Time management

As skills are different, approaches, methods and

tools for their development will be different. So that

the teacher could work effectively with students and

help them develop the above mentioned skills, he

must plan the expected results and the program of ac-

tion that will help students to develop the appropriate

soft skills. The use of ICT in the educational process

will greatly facilitate the formation of soft skills, and

at the same time students’ awareness of higher educa-

tion latest trends will be greatly enhanced with digital

and ICT literacy. Kuybida et al. (Kuybida et al., 2019)

states that the development of digital skills is one of

the conditions for developing the digital market of any

country, a necessary condition for successful cooper-

ation and interaction in ‘innovation ecosystems’.

Nowadays ICT play a crucial role in future for-

eign language teachers’ soft skills development. In

our research we will use such understanding of ICT –

“a set of methods, production processes, software and

hardware, integrated for collecting, processing, stor-

ing, transmission, demonstrating and the use of data

in the interests of their users” (Shvachich et al., 2017).

The notion of ICTs will be considered not only as

hardware and software, but also as the more advanced

scheme of (Shvachich et al., 2017):

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

428

1. Theoretical principles (concepts and laws of com-

puter science).

2. Methods of solving problems (modeling, system

analysis, system design, methods of transmis-

sion, collection, production, accumulation, stor-

age, processing, transmission and protection of in-

formation).

3. Means for achieving tasks:

• hardware (personal computer and its compo-

nents; local and global networks, modern pe-

ripheral equipment);

• software (system, applied, universal, special,

instrumental).

Nowadays ICTs are widely used in the educational

process and in many cases due to the use of ICT it has

become possible to create virtual universities that do

not require students to stay in the classroom, but allow

them to adjust their curriculum, study outside the city

or country. This surely provides more opportunities to

implement a lifelong learning strategy in order to en-

rich people’s knowledge, improve skills and abilities

necessary for effective adaptation to new professional

and living conditions.

The use of ICT also promotes the implementation

of interactive learning within the system “teacher –

computer – student” and helps primarily to develop

communication skills, the ability to establish emo-

tional contact. Interactivity is a key feature of ICT in

the learning process, it contributes greatly to the im-

plementation of other didactic qualities of ICT, such

as communication, adaptability, productivity and cre-

ativity (Gurevich et al., 2012).

Thus, we see that the basic didactic qualities of

ICT coincide with the basic soft skills that a person

must develop to be successful in today’s world.

In the educational process, ICT can act as a sub-

ject of study, as a learning tools, as a means of manag-

ing the educational process, and as a tool for manag-

ing research and scientiﬁc and methodological work

(Gurevich et al., 2012). Speaking about the process

of learning foreign languages and preparing for fu-

ture teaching activities in the context of developing

students’ soft skills, ICT would be considered a learn-

ing tool, a means for managing the learning process,

research and methodological work.

The pandemic of 2020 promoted the massive use

of virtual classrooms and video conferencing soft-

ware. They are often used now as a tools for or-

ganization classes while distance learning. Such

programmes and platforms as Zoom, Google Meet,

Panopto, Microsoft Teams are useful helpers for ev-

ery teacher. In the context of soft skills development

it is worth to mention that all of them contribute to

communication skills development as well as to team-

building development. Being at a distance from each

other, students have a possibility to continue commu-

nication and collaboration. Teachers can use these

tools to split students into groups (break-out rooms),

ask them to write messages in the chat (e.g. in pairs),

share a screen, video, audio or ﬁles etc. The use of

software for videoconferences facilitates future teach-

ers’ new understanding of classroom management in

terms of making digital classroom as close to a phys-

ical one as it is possible.

The ICT as a learning tool stands for various soft-

ware, platforms, Internet sources used while learning

foreign languages and obtaining competences needed

for future teachers. One of the most useful foreign

languages learning tools are social services in the In-

ternet, for example, social nets, blogs, mind maps,

imitators of 3D space, which are called Web 2.0 tech-

nology (Kazhan et al., 2020). All these tools allow

students to communicate with native speakers of for-

eign languages, representatives of different cultures

and nationalities, that is much more useful for learn-

ing and more effective than the study of this material

with the help of coursebooks. It also promotes the

development of such students’ soft skills as commu-

nication skills, collaborating, negotiations, emotional

intelligence, intercultural awareness and others.

Mind maps or virtual boards are a good tool to de-

velop critical, systemic and creative thinking as well

as communication skills and team-building. The term

‘mind map’ was proposed by Tony Buzan in 1970s

and later in 2007 the ﬁrst program (MindMeister) for

creating visualized schemes was made (Ivanova et al.,

2020). At modern stage of ICT development there

is a big variety of such programmes. The most pop-

ular ones are MindMeister, Padlet, Jamboard, Miro,

Coogle, Xmind, BubblUs, MindMup, Canva. These

programmes can be used as auxiliary means for brain-

storming to share thoughts and ideas online. Brain-

storming is one of the most effective methods for crit-

ical and creative thinking development. Mind maps

can also be used for creating notes while lectures and

conferences as well as for planning that can greatly

contribute to the development of time management

skills.

For the visualization of information, graphic

recording is used. Such new techniques of process-

ing and presentation of information as scribing and

sketch-noting can became a good alternative to usual

notes in paper notebooks or presentation. To make

a video with the help of scribing or to write a lec-

ture with the help of sketch-noting one should analyse

and choose the most important facts among the vari-

ety of information proposed by a lecturer or books

Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Soft Skills by Means of ICT in Ukrainian Universities

429

and media. The future teachers should reconceptu-

alise everything and present in the most appropriate

way. All these activities train their thinking mak-

ing it more creative and critical as well as training

their ability to solve complex problems. Among pro-

grammes that can be used for scribing there are Pow-

Toon, GoAnimate, Sparkol Videoscribe, Animaker,

apps used for sketch-noting are Paper by Fifty Three,

Explain Everything, Sketchbook Express, Notability.

These types of visualization are especially valuable

for students participating in project-based multimedia

learning.

In the context of both hard and soft skills devel-

opment CLIL method will be also relevant as joint

learning foreign languages and computer science has

a high potential for enhancing employable teacher

training (Merzlykin et al., 2018).

While considering ICT to be the means of achiev-

ing our research purposes, we studied the current sit-

uation of students’ digital skills development. There

are the survey results realised by a team of researchers

from Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagog-

ical University, Kherson State Maritime Academy

and Dmytro Motornyi Tavria State Agrotechnolog-

ical University. According to it “most of the stu-

dents (40.6%) who participated in the survey would

like to study using the mixed learning technology

(combining online, traditional technologies and self-

study), 20.8% of the students prefer studying tradi-

tionally (lectures and practical lessons in the class-

room), 13.9% of the students would like to study in

groups (to get the project task and work on the result),

9.9% of the students would like to study on an individ-

ual schedule, 8/9% of the students would like to study

distantly, 5.9% of the students have pointed out that

there is no matter what technology is used” (Voloshi-

nov et al., 2020). The investigation took place before

the pandemic. Now we know that both students and

teachers faced a lot of challenges mostly associated

with the lack of digital skills.

We conducted a survey among teachers and stu-

dents of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Peda-

gogical University in order to learn the level of aware-

ness of methods for soft skills development and to

identify the most important skills. 10 teachers and

53 students took part in the survey. The survey was

conducted by means of Google Forms. Two question-

naires with similar questions were proposed to each

group.

1. Do you know what soft skills are?

2. How can you deﬁne soft skills?

3. What skills from the suggested list are important

in today’s professional and everyday life? (several

possible answers). If necessary, add to the list.

(a) Complex Problem Solving

(b) Critical Thinking

(d) People Management

(e) Coordinating with Others

(f) Emotional Intelligence

(g) Judgment and Decision making

(h) Service Orientation

(i) Negotiation

(j) Cognitive Flexibility

4. What skills from the suggested list are important

for a future foreign language teacher? (several

possible answers). If necessary, add to the list.

(The same list)

5. Have you attended trainings, seminars, webinars,

which cover the topic of soft skills development?

6. What methods, techniques would you like the

teachers use in the classroom to improve your soft

skills? (a question for students) / What methods,

techniques do you use in the classroom to develop

students’ soft skills? (a question for teachers)

7. What ICT would help you to improve your soft

skills? (a question for students) / What ICT do

you use in the classroom in order to develop stu-

dents’ soft skills? (a question for teachers).

The study revealed that 90% of teachers have an

idea of what soft skills are, among students the ﬁg-

ure was lower, only 47.8% answered that they know

exactly what soft skills are.

Among the skills a person needs in everyday life,

most teachers chose Critical Thinking (100% of re-

spondents) and Cognitive Flexibility (80%), as well as

Coordinating with Others (80%), Judgment and De-

cision making (70%) and Complex Problem Solving

(70%).

Coordinating with Others (84.9%) was in the ﬁrst

place for students. Other important features in the

opinion of students are Judgment and Decision mak-

ing (83%) and Creativity (77.4%).

In the questions about the skills necessary for

a future foreign language teacher, Creativity (90%)

and Coordinating with Others (90%) are preferable

from the point of view of teachers. Critical Thinking

(80%) and Cognitive Flexibility are also considered

by teachers to be important qualities for future teach-

ers.

Almost similar results on this issue were obtained

in a survey of students: they consider Coordinating

with Others (86.8%) and Creativity (86.8%) the most

useful skills for future teachers, as well as Cognitive

Flexibility (69.8%) and Negotiation (52.8%).

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

430

Figure 1: Students’ and lecturers’ attitude to soft skills

needed in life.

The survey also revealed that only 40% of teachers

and 17.8% of students attended trainings, seminars,

webinars dedicated to the soft skills development.

Teachers demonstrated greater awareness of the

methods and techniques used to develop soft skills

(group work, project technology, problem-based

learning, role playing game, business game, dis-

cussion, interactive communication, micro-teaching,

work in variable groups). As for students, most re-

spondents did not have a clear idea of the meth-

ods that can enhance the soft skills development.

Only a few students were able to answer clearly

(group work, business games, creative tasks, research

projects, trainings, interactive games and technolo-

gies). However, almost all respondents mentioned

methods and techniques related to creativity and ac-

tive interaction between people. Some students ex-

pressed their wish to develop time management and

public speaking as rather important skills.

Among ICT assisted methods and techniques used

by teachers in class to develop soft skills, there are

web quests, E-learning, Google Forms, Google Docs,

Jamboard, audio and video materials, case method,

review and analysis of Internet pages on the problem,

computer testing, multimedia equipment, e-mailing,

social networking, TED talks. There were some other

items mentioned though they can be called neither

methods nor techniques.

Many students found it difﬁcult to answer this

question. Some of them mentioned artiﬁcial intel-

ligence, various messengers, social networks, video

conferencing, viewing of developing content, infor-

mation portals, mobile applications, media broad-

Figure 2: Students’ and lecturers’ attitude to soft skills

needed in professional activity.

casts, webinars, trainings, interactive quests.

Thus, having analysed the survey data, we can

conclude that both teachers and students have almost

the same idea of future foreign language teacher’s

soft skills. Both groups of respondents replied that

the focus should be made on the development of cre-

ative thinking, creativity and the ability to cooperate

with others. However, we observed a lack of aware-

ness and understanding among students about meth-

ods, techniques and tools to be used in the process of

soft skills development. Thus, it is necessary to pay

more attention to this issue in the educational process

and to integrate soft skills development in educational

programmes content and aims.

On the basis of information collected by us and

mentioned above with the further study of the topic,

we plan to develop a model for soft skills develop-

ment of future foreign language teachers, which will

be mostly associated with the use of modern ICT. It

is planned to implement the developed model into the

educational process of applicants for higher education

of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical

University, who study in the specialty 014.021 Sec-

ondary education (English language and literature)

and check its effectiveness.

Now on our list of soft skills to primarily develop

are those offered in the typical program “Methodol-

ogy of teaching English” for Bachelor’s degree (Bevz

et al., 2009): communication, collaboration, creativ-

ity, critical thinking, information and digital literacy,

intercultural awareness, problem-solving, time man-

agement. Step-by-step, we are going to add other soft

skills to this list as modern reality is extremely dy-

Development of Future Foreign Language Teachers’ Soft Skills by Means of ICT in Ukrainian Universities

431

namic and requires ﬂexibility and quick reaction to

everyday challenges in education.

Among methods and technologies to be used ﬁrst

and foremost are the following:

1. Problem-based learning

2. Case-study method

3. Interactive learning technologies

4. Game technologies

5. Blended learning technologies and m-learning

technology

In the process of implementing the soft skills de-

velopment model, we will focus on classroom and

distance learning within the curriculum of the study

programme. Besides of activities in physical or vir-

tual classes there will be special focus on students’

self-study dealing with their learner autonomy and

other skills. One more component of our model will

be linked to students’ extracurricular activity. For

these purposes the list of recommended ICT tools will

be created to support students.

Our research plan comprises the idea of creation

an educational centre or a hub which will be a territory

for cooperation, collaboration and sharing experience,

a place for discussing issues related to methodology

of teaching foreign languages and various issues re-

lated to the educational process, current trends in ed-

ucation, of the national and world level, small-scale

and large-scale investigations. It is possible to involve

not only students and teachers of Bogdan Khmelnit-

sky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, but also

stakeholders: school teachers, methodologists, vari-

ous educational and cultural organizations represen-

tatives. Other universities, schools and colleges can

also be involved in the cooperation.

By participating in the educational hub, students

will be able to develop such soft skills as communica-

tion skills, skills of cooperation and critical thinking,

to expand their intercultural and international aware-

ness. Participation in seminars, trainings, etc. will al-

low students to prepare for future professional activ-

ities and expand their understanding of modern pro-

fessional requirements, combine their learning and re-

search. A special sequence of workshops with ICT as-

sisted professional development activities will be de-

livered, so that future teachers could handle with their

soft skills at present and be ready for that in future.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The process of training foreign language teachers for

professional activity, equipping them with hard skills

cannot and should not be limited to the development

of professional skills and abilities, it is also necessary

to develop universal skills that will help them be more

competitive in the labour market and more effective

organise their professional activity. In the modern

system of higher education in Ukraine, although there

appear researches of the need to focus on the meth-

ods and ways to develop soft skills of representatives

of various branches, but there are no effective pro-

grammes of action or models of implementing this

idea. So the issue remains relevant and needs further

consideration. We hope that the working out and im-

plementation of the model of future foreign language

teachers’ soft skills development will be effective and

help students feel more conﬁdent when starting their

professional career.

There are still a lot of issues waiting for further

study and ﬁnding solutions. For future employees in

any branch the framework of their professional train-

ing should contain not only hard skills and compe-

tences but also be focused on creating the opportu-

nities for their soft skills development. The list of

soft skills for each job should be compiled, the rec-

ommendations of the possible ways for their develop-

ment should be produced.

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