DEVELOPMENT OF SOFT SKILLS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Radical changes and recent developments in the global labour market, the emergence of new professions, and shifts in the requirements for professional training and competencies have led to the need to enhance higher education in line with current educational conditions.The concept of developing flexible skills in students has become a significant educational goal over the last decade, leading to changes in methodological approaches to the learning process.The article emphasises the importance of developing soft skills in the higher education process.The work reflects the requirements of the modern labour market and defines a system of key competencies for specialists, thereby justifying the relevance of developing soft skills.The work examines the content and types of universal competencies, as well as their importance in the training of future specialists.It emphasises the importance of focusing on new professional standards in various specialities, which confirm the need for specialists to develop universal competencies, including soft skills and foreign language proficiency.The purpose of the article is to study the specifics of developing soft skills in the process of learning a foreign language.The authors employed theoretical and methodological analyses of contemporary publications on the research topic, as well as a comparative analysis of the implementation of the educational process in the fields of universal and highly specialised competencies, as their primary methods.The study's results showed that foreign language classes.However, to varying degrees, contribute to the development of flexible skills in students and, as a result, prepare them for their future professional activities.A general conclusion was made that the study of foreign languages in modern higher education not only allows students to develop communication and language skills, but also contributes to the formation of various flexible skills.