The Future of Education

The methodology of teaching a foreign language is currently shifting towards making language-learning practices more and more specific, covering a large number of professional areas where English, or any other foreign language, is primarily used for work as well as research and development purposes. The authors of new textbooks, therefore, are expected to create learning materials that will fit the needs of a narrow target audience studying English for specific purposes (ESP), which is especially true for teaching a foreign language in higher education institutions. What makes the new approach to writing a textbook different is that it should include professionally oriented content combined with the tasks for developing both hard and soft skills.  The range of these skills may vary from profession to profession and is expected to be defined by students themselves as the “skills required.” Students majoring in international relations, for example, are supposed to be taught in English classes critical reading and listening, summarising texts, making statements and presentations, participating in roundtables/ debates/ verbal jousts/ panel discussions, writing reviews, etc. as hard skills; critical thinking, good communication skills, problem solving, team work and leadership, flexibility and working under stress, empathy, responsibility and positive attitude as soft skills. If time envisaged for learning a language allows expanding the curriculum, Academic English will also be a useful addition the course, which now can be called a course for specific and academic purposes (ESAP). To realize these tasks a whole arsenal of multifaceted and multistage tasks are needed. A new ESAP textbook, therefore, must combine traditional teaching methods, such as text analysis, listening comprehension, academic writing and others with case studies and project work, which seem to be the best ways to integrate hard and soft skills.

Keywords: ESP, Academic English, hard skills, soft skills.

References:
[1] Yastrebova E.B., Kravtsova O.A. THE INNOVATIVE POTENTIAL OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES FOR PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES. Philology at MGIMO. 2017;(9):56-67. (In Russ.)
[2] Zemach Dorothy. Sausage and the Law: How Textbooks are Made. Plenary IATEFL 2018, Brighton, England. Available at
https://conference.iatefl.org/2018/downloads/programme/Full%20Conference%20Programme.pdf