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Publication details
How the question “ Do we have guns ?“ in a soft skills Negotiation course influenced our in-service LSP teacher training in a new Impact project
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Year of publication | 2012 |
Type | Conference abstract |
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Description | The presentation will briefly describe the outcomes of the Compact project, which the Language Centre at Masaryk University ran between 2009 and 2012. Within this project 26 new soft skills courses in foreign languages were developed and over 1000 students, academics, researchers and other employees were trained. Our soft skills courses in English, French, Spanish and German were created as a direct response to the analysis carried out among HR departments of big private companies as well as state institutions in the Czech Republic and among students at Masaryk University and they reflected the gap in the skills required from university graduates and students expectations of what skills they may potentially need at work after graduation. Courses of negotiation, solving conflicts, self presentation and preparation for a job interview, intercultural communication, emotional intelligence, videoconferencing skills, academic writing, communication, creativity, critical thinking to name a few showed that even though the participants had a very good command of a foreign language (B2 of CEFR), they lacked the soft skills component and needed guidance. This discrepancy between a high command of a foreign language and the unawareness of appropriate reactions, behaviour and strategies was very obvious primarily during solving case studies of courses on negotiation and solving conflicts. We strongly felt that we need to train university LSP teachers in methodology with components of soft skills so that they can introduce components of soft skills into their courses of academic foreign language. |
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