How to develop soft skills – good practice examples from Bulgaria

Toshko Tonev, Radostina Toneva

35 SEU Dobri Voinikov, Bulgraria, Sofia

Soft skills are universal and are key to any field in which the students
would like to develop themselves. To be prepared for the dynamic world we
live in, we need flexibility, responsibility, social skills (related to
communication and teamwork), emotional intelligence, being well-organized,
problem solving and more.
Soft skills are roughly divided into three categories: personal, social, and
methodical skills.

Teachers can start developing most of these skills in the children from an early age.
The good practices we share describe practical activities, methods, techniques and
approaches that are integrated into Bulgarian language and literature classes at an
early stage in order to develop students' socio-emotional skills.
Interactive games, techniques and activities are used to help the students to
recognize in great depth the feelings and behavior of the literary characters in
different situations and also to promote communication skills and behavior
according to the ethical norms.
Through the recognition and understanding of the characters’emotions in the
literary works, the students are eager to recognize and share their own feelings. The
children are offered exercises to develop empathy for the feelings of the others,
they learn how to manage their emotions, how to express tolerance and how to
solve conflicts by analyzing different situations, related to the literary characters.
The literary works are introduced to the children via socio-emotionally based
questions:
• What emotions do the characters show?
• At what moment does the hero feel joy / sadness /…?
• How does the hero control his feelings?
• Which of the characters’ feelings do you think are positive?
The students are also required to analyze the cause of the characters’feelings; to
track the changes in the feelings and emotions of the characters; to evaluate the
shown emotions.
In the literature lesson, the students reflect on their own emotions in order to:
- discover and express the feelings they experience from what is happening in the
literary work;
- put themselves in the shoes of the heroes and to empathize;
- compare their feelings with those of their classmates;
- give examples of situations in which they experienced the same feelings as the
characters.
The asking of socio-emotionally based questions in the process of examining a
literary work helps to show the connection between actions and emotions - both in
real life and in the literary text.
The students use emoticons, made by themselves, to show both their feelings and
the feelings of the characters at every moment of the literary work analysis.
Another exercise for recognizing the feelings of the characters is to find out what
words the author of the literary work has used to show how the characters feel at a
given moment. In this way, the students realize that sometimes the authors use
specific words that show the feelings of the characters, but in other cases they
should read carefully because the feelings are expressed through behavior, posture,
voice intonation and even silence.
The social behavior of the characters is discussed through the following questions:
"What do you like most about the character's behavior?"
"How would you solve the problem between the characters?"
"How would you react to the character's bad deed?"
"What would you do if you were in the shoes of the main character in this
particular situation?"
The aim of these discussions is to draw the students’ attention to the collaboration
and mutual assistance between characters; to the friendship between them and to
the ways of friendship; if the characters observe the rules and norms of
communication; what approaches do they use in the solving of the conflict.
The students are asked to find and read in the texts examples of positive actions of
the characters: when they are caring, empathetic, tolerant, cooperative. The texts
learned in the literature lesson give us many positive examples of social behavior.
The students see the actions of the characters and can model their behavior for
different interactions. These skills can then be practiced on the playground, at
home, in the neighborhood, and during the free time in the classroom.
Another option, used to build social and emotional skills, is to transform the
communication between the characters or their behavior.
For this aim are used excerpts from a literary work in which the characters are at
odds, disagreeing with each other, or experiencing negative feelings. In these
situations, students are required to change / transform / the dialogue between the
characters in order to reflect a more positive social communication. The students
influence positively the behavior of the negative characters, who violate the social
norms of communication by changing their speech.
Another activity that the children do is to change the end of a story or a narrative so
that it can have a positive end. For this reason, are proposed texts that need to be
changed in order to end optimistically and in accordance with the ethical standards.
An important part of the literature lesson is the manifestation of some personality
traits that help students to develop soft skills:
- the ability to listen patiently to the opinion of the others;
- to be persuasive when expressing their opinion;
- to accept the feedback / opinion / of their classmates when discussing the
behavior of the characters;
- to tell stories that are fascinating to the others;
- to recognize and value the positive in the actions of the literary characters.
These personality traits were developed through the game “Interview”.
The students work in pairs by asking and answering questions related to the studied
literary work.
Another option for the game is to interview the characters from the literary work,
by asking questions to the students who represent the literary characters.
The following interactive techniques have also been integrated into the literature
classes:
Writing a Good Tale
The purpose of the game is the children to practice using good words and to judge
which word is good.
The children are sitting in a circle. The presenter says one sentence and writes it
down. For example: "The good words lived in a married family ..." The child sitting
to the right of the presenter says another sentence, which must be related in
meaning to the sentence spoken by the presenter.
Each subsequent student adds with his sentence to the text that the presenter writes
down. After all the children have said their sentence, the presenter reads "The Good
Tale" made by the class.
The condition of the story is that the students should make sure that in the text there
are as many good words and good deeds as possible.
Finally, in a discussion, the children share in what situations are used good words.
The Game “The Dice of Feelings”
For the purpose of this game is used a dice, the sides of which contain the six basic
feelings: love, joy, anger, guilt, sadness and fear. Each participant should try to
describe a moment in a fairy tale in which one of the characters has experienced the
feeling that turns out to be on the dice.
Emphasis is put on the causes of the occurrence and expression of certain feelings.
A parallel can be drawn between the real situation that has happened with the
participant and the emotions of the literary hero.
A game “In the shoes of the other”
The children play and empathize a role that expresses the feelings experienced by
the literary characters. The children use the following lines: "When I step into the
shoes of the character, I feel why he felt that way," "I understand why he / she was
offended / sad, etc." In conclusion, the students share whether they have ever
experienced such feelings. If the feeling is negative, the students brainstorm in
order to offer as many options as possible to transform the negative feeling into a
positive one.
Technique: "Let’s discuss the deeds"
The students are divided into groups. Each group aims to discuss the actions of one
of the characters in a literary work. After completing the task, one representative of
the group introduces the literary character to the other students in the class by
analyzing in detail the reasons for his actions in each situation.
Technique: ”Introduce Me”
In this technique, a student from the class has the task to get acquainted in advance
with the future literary work before presenting it to his classmates. This enables the
students to develop one of their most important soft skills.