The topic for today is ‘’ soft skills’’.
Task 1.
Read the text below to get the general idea:
Soft skills are essential to career success in the contemporary world as they play an important role at the workplace. It is said that your technical skills may help you get the job, but your soft skills will help you keep it. What exactly are they?
Hard skills are basically the occupational requirements for a particular job. Soft skills on the other hand are mostly personality traits of individual persons which characterize their relationship with other people. They are related to people skills, communication, personal habits and feelings or emotions. In the broad context, soft skills would also include: team work, leadership, problem-solving, persuading, negotiation, decision making and conflict-resolution. Soft skills complement hard skills and they are, therefore, increasingly sought by HR professionals and job hunters looking for most suitable work candidates. In addition to standard qualifications and experience, soft skills constitute a necessity especially for those organizations which deal with customers, mainly face-to-face, on a daily basis. Other companies also value soft skills in their potential hires, but they might need a different set of them, depending on the kind of business they are in. Nowadays soft skills are seen as an additional indicator of whether an applicant will make a good employee or not. The lack of soft skills may also lead to low job performance or even influence the company’s profits. An Australian pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis, for instance, has increased its sales by 12% after training their sales reps in soft skills.
It goes without saying that today common job requirements or qualifications are no longer sufficient on the present employment market. Apart from good education, relevant work experience or professional training, soft skills constitute a must-have of every potential candidate and therefore they should become a crucial element of a typical CV.
Task 2.
Study the text carefully and complete the sentences below with appropriate words in correct forms:
1. ‘’ Technical skills may take you to the doorstep, but it is your ……………. skills that will open up the door for you’’.
2. …..…… skills are your background education and knowledge.
3. The group of political supporters has been ………………………… by journalists as extremely liberal and aggressive.
4. Personality or character …………..… are defined as particular qualities of an individual.
5. Another way of saying that something or somebody makes a good combination with something/somebody else: ……………………….…
6. Unauthorized, long-term work absence gives a ………………..…reason for job termination.
7. If you strongly believe that something is very important or worth doing, it means that you really ………………..… it.
8. A less formal word to use as a substitute for ‘’ an employee’’ is: …………….…
9. Basic computer-literacy is an undisputable ……………………..… for job applicants nowadays.
10. Opinion polls have become a critical ………………………… of changing political preferences.
Task 3.
Watch the video ‘’ What are soft skills? ‘’ and decide whether the information below is true (T) or false (F):
1. The term soft skills has a clear and well-defined meaning. …….
2. Skills are, in general, abilities that people do to complete a task. …….
3. Skills add value or success to what people do at work. ……
4. Hard skills are directly related to interaction with other people. …..
5. Building software or craft work mainly involve hard skills. ……
6. Soft skills inherently engage other people. ……
7. Leadership, discovery and team work are tied to soft skills. ……
8. Hard skills increase or diminish the value of soft skills. …..
9. Problem-solving might be a soft skill for an IT engineer, but for an end-user it might be a hard skill. …..
10. Pulling a team together and collaborating with other experts to produce a fix is viewed as a soft skill.
KEY TO EXERCISES
Task 2.
1. ‘’ Technical skills may take you to the doorstep, but it is your ……SOFT………. skills that will open up the door for you’’.
2. ….HARD …… skills are your background education and knowledge.
3. The group of political supporters has been …CHARACTERIZED … by journalists as extremely liberal and aggressive.
4. Personality or character …TRAITS… are defined as particular qualities of an individual.
5. Another way of saying that something or somebody makes a good combination with something/somebody else: …COMPLEMENT…
6. Unauthorized, long-term work absence gives a ….SUFFICIENT …reason for job termination.
7. If you strongly believe that something is very important or worth doing, it means that you really …….VALUE… it.
8. A less formal word to use as a substitute for ‘’ an employee’’ is: ….HIRE…
9. Basic computer-literacy is an undisputable …MUST-HAVE … for job applicants nowadays.
10. Opinion polls have become a critical ….INDICATOR… of changing political preferences.
Task 3.
1. The term soft skills has a clear and well-defined meaning.…F..
2. Skills are, in general, abilities that people do to complete a task.…T.
3. Skills add value or success to what people do at work.…T.
4. Hard skills are directly related to interaction with other people..F..
5. Building software or craft work mainly involve hard skills…T..
6. Soft skills inherently engage other people…T..
7. Leadership, discovery and team work are tied to soft skills…T..
8. Hard skills increase or diminish the value of soft skills. ..F..
9. Problem-solving might be a soft skill for an IT engineer, but for an end-user it might be a hard skill. ..F..
10. Pulling a team together and collaborating with other experts to produce a fix is viewed as a soft skill. ..T..
LEKCJA DO POBRANIA:
Soft skills
Soft skills KEY
Jak tak czytam te wszystkie wypowiedzi, to zastanawiam się czy to Wy mieszkacie na innej planecie, czy ja. Skąd takie podejście?