Title

The Importance of Soft Skills: Education beyond Academic Knowledge.

Authors

Schulz, Bernd

Abstract

This paper makes a survey of the importance of soft skills in students' lives both at college and after college. It discusses how soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a job the student is trained to do. The paper exhorts educators to take special responsibility regarding soft skills, because during students' university time, educators have major influence on the development of their students' soft skills. Embedding the training of soft skills into hard skills courses is a very effective and efficient method of achieving both an attractive way of teaching a particular content and an enhancement of soft skills. Soft skills fulfil an important role in shaping an individual's personality. It is of high importance for every student to acquire adequate skills beyond academic or technical knowledge.

Subjects

PERSONALITY development; ABILITY; COLLEGE students; ACADEMIC achievement; EDUCATION; UNIVERSITIES & colleges

Publication

NAWA Journal of Language & Communication, 2008, Vol 2, Issue 1, p146

ISSN

1993-3835

Publication type

Academic Journal