Abstract:

Universities integrate into the global academic community, providing highly skilled staff for educational institutions and businesses. Soft skills development in postgraduate students is one of the major challenges that universities face nowadays. The employability of young researchers, their pursuit of an academic career and meeting the requirements of non-academic employers largely depend on their professional development. Soft skills are skills that contribute to professional development, are applicable in different settings and environments and help choose a career path.

There is a set of particular soft skills needed for postgraduate students and young researchers which can be developed through the course of English as a foreign language.

They are communication skills listed below:
• to speak effectively in any meeting relevant to the research project;
• to convey complex information to various audiences;
• to coherently organize material for presentations and reports,
• to facilitate discussions, speak English fluently and coherently;
• to write conference abstracts, journal manuscripts, research papers in English.

The presented study considers the ways to develop communication soft skills in postgraduate students via foreign language training course. The objectives of the study are to describe soft skills development as a trend in modern education; to review the main ideas on modernization of postgraduate training course and the improvement of didactic methods; to substantiate the importance of presentation skills and research writing for postgraduate students. The conclusions contribute to better understanding of the ways to improve and modernize the foreign language course content regarding communication soft skills development to meet current demands and expectations in educational and academic environments.

Keywords:

Soft skills, postgraduate students, language learning, presentations, research writing.