Life skills, soft skills, 21st-century skills or transferable skills – call them as you like. But what are they, and why have they been such buzzwords in education recently? Life skills is a term used to describe a set of basic skills acquired through learning and/or direct life experience. These skills help us deal effectively with the challenges at school, at work or in our personal lives.
Life skills include a wide range of competences, such as creative and critical thinking, decision-making, problem-solving, communication skills, mindfulness and empathy. Most of these skills can be applied in different jobs and environments, this is why one of the terms for them is transferable skills. We do need to know how to manage our time well, to work in a team efficiently, or to face change and new challenges. But what does it have to do with English lessons?
There are several reasons why we should teach our teenage learners these skills. First, life is changing faster now than ever, and our teenage students have to be ready for its challenges and stress from a much younger age. Communicative English lessons already include a number of activities which are just perfect for life skills development, such as problem-solving games and debates, personality tests, projects and presentations. Second, today’s students need training in skills that can be applied to multiple jobs. The times when a person could stick to one job for all their life are gone. Now, according to the US Department of Labor, a modern teenage learner is likely to have 10 to 14 jobs by the age of 38. So, apart from being knowledgeable, our learners will benefit from being flexible, resilient, creative and agile.
Another thing that goes hand in hand with 21st-century skills is HOTs. You have probably heard about Bloom’s taxonomy. It was designed by Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues and it describes levels of thinking. Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchy which consists of six levels:
Evaluation, creation and analysis are considered to be HOTS, or higher-order thinking skills. Unlike LOTS, lower-order thinking skills, HOTS will significantly improve students’ critical thinking, logical thinking, and problem-solving. They enable students to reach a higher level of mastery and achievement both in academic and career fields.
Below in this article, you will find some practical ideas on how to incorporate life skills into your lessons, which coursebooks to use and what to bear in mind.
Creative thinking
Creative thinking enables students to see things in a different light, which leads to innovation and discoveries. Children and teenagers need to develop this skill as their ability to generate fresh ideas and come up with unusual decisions will make them an asset at their future workplace. Not least, the ability to think outside the box will definitely help your students in decision-making, building relationships and solving problems. To practise creative thinking, try the following:
Critical thinking
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas. It also implies an ability to check information for credibility or distinguish facts from opinions, for instance. Here are some implications for the classroom:
Paper books are becoming less and less popular in our modern world. Unfortunately (too subjective), most people (what is it based on? Research? Any proofs?) choose the Internet or other digital sources of information. That is why (is it a well-developed logical connection?) I believe that paper books are useless.
Who wrote this text? What do you know about this person? What other things have they written?
Which website is the text from? What do you know about this website?
Do the places/people in the text really exist?
Is there photographic evidence of what the text says? Does it look real?
Communication skills
A traditional communicative lesson is likely to contain a lot of practice to develop communication skills. Here is what you can do to make sure that it is true:
She ___________ a cake.
If you are writing a dictation, dictate sentences that students can finish with their own ideas.
Yesterday I was walking to the ___________ when suddenly I saw a ___________ woman. She was wearing ___________, and she was carrying ___________. The strangest thing about her was ___________. Etc.
All in all, teaching life skills to our teenage learners seems to be of great use for them. It might improve their academic performance, prepare them for the world of work, and even boost their self-confidence. Of course, we cannot make them think critically or enjoy being creative. However, as Dave Spencer, the author of the ‘Gateway’ coursebooks, says, ‘like it or not, the very moment an adult teacher walks into a class full of young students, whatever subject we teach, we are teaching Life Skills by providing a model for our students.’
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