Abstract:

In the modern world, more and more attention is paid to the formation and development of soft skills. One of these skills is creativity, or the ability to be creative. In foreign language lessons, teachers traditionally use a large number of tasks and exercises aimed at stimulating creative activity, since it increases the motivation of students, arouses their interest and positive emotions. The purpose of this investigation is to substantiate the need for a new approach to the development of students' creativity in foreign language lessons within a modern higher educational institution. The authors of the article have conducted the research among students of different universities and have developed a number of recommendations with examples of effective creative exercises aimed at developing both soft skills (creativity) and hard skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing).

The following issues are highlighted as the research results:
- the main tasks and exercises for the development of students' creative abilities for the development of all types of speech activities in foreign language teaching have been identified and their effectiveness in new conditions has been analyzed;
- the options for improving the wording of existing tasks have been proposed and new exercises to develop students' creativity have been created;
- the general recommendations for teachers regarding the proposed innovations have been provided.

Keywords:

Soft skills, creativity, listening, reading, speaking, writing, non-standard context.