Language and employability skills: Critical thinking, creativity, and communication

Ken Beatty
A server standing and smiling at a group of ladies smiling sat at a table

Why learn a language?

For most, it's part of academic studies. For some, it's a fun social opportunity. But for many, language learning is aimed at getting a job.

Language teachers didn't always consider the reasons students were motivated to learn a language. Instead, they focused solely on the central parts of language learning: phonology (sounds of letters and words), morphology (the meaning of parts of words), lexicon (vocabulary), grammar (word order) and to a lesser extent, discourse (the intent of language).

But today, beyond the mechanical aspects of language teaching and learning, language teachers and their teaching and learning materials try to align with students' motivations. This includes exploring a wide variety of social issues from global warming to racism to homelessness. Reasons for teaching these issues are based on the notion that language is culture, and students want to learn broad topics and be able to contribute to conversations about the issues of the day.

Employability skills

A related challenge facing students is employability skills. In the past, students were largely taught the types of language expected of factory workers: giving and responding to simple instructions. Most students learning via the audio-lingual method would consider the question "How are you?" to always be answered with the response, "I'm fine, thank you." The reality, of course, is that you might just as well say, "I'm okay." "Can't complain!" "Not too bad." or even the little-used but truthful, "I feel terrible!"

The Communicative Approach challenged this pre-programmed speech and reflected changes in the workplace. As robots and artificial intelligence agents take over more and more factory work, today's language students are graduating into jobs that require critical thinking, creativity, and broad communication skills. What are these skills and how do they relate to employability?

Critical thinking is about examining problems to better understand them. Sometimes critical thinking helps students make choices between one or more alternatives. Like creativity and communication, critical thinking is vital in both academic and employment situations where, for example, staff might try to decide between two locations to build a new factory.

Creative thinking is about looking for new solutions. In the factory example, a solution might be to build a factory on a boat so it travels between where the raw materials are collected to the market where they're to be sold.

Communication is about explaining ideas, listening to others' views, and using persuasive speaking and writing to structure arguments. Is the factory boat the best idea? It might be, but without clear communication and debate, it will be tossed aside.

In terms of employability, the app series Step Up outlines the varied needs faced by adult learners: "to improve their employability skills to get their first job, secure a promotion, find a different job, re-enter the workforce after an absence or change fields."

Meeting these needs requires new teaching and assessment approaches.

Be collaborative

Teaching has to become more collaborative. This reflects the nature of modern work, where most people work in teams, rather than in the factory model where workers were interchangeable parts of a machine. Workers today need to identify problems, share ideas about how to solve them and negotiate, using critical and creative thinking.

Assess positively

Similarly, assessment needs to change to a model that allows students opportunities to show what they know in open-ended ways with multiple opportunities to achieve success. Tests with closed-ended questions aimed at tricking students are a thing of the past. Assessment today needs to present students with chances to learn and try again and again until they and their teachers are confident of their abilities.

Learning a language and related abilities, like employability skills, is not a narrow classroom-bound experience. Students continue to learn and improve throughout their lives. More than anything else, the role of today's teachers is to set their students on a path of lifelong learning.

To empower your learners with the employability skills they need for future success, watch Ken's webinar here:

Employability: New Jobs, New Needs for Language Learners l Future of Language Learning Webinar 1
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree app can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

Explore more webinars

About the author

, Writer and Anaheim University TESOL Professor has a PhD in curriculum studies. He’s worked in Asia, the Middle East, and North and South America, lecturing on language teaching and learning from the primary through university levels. Author/co-author of 67 textbooks for app, he’s given 500+ teacher-training sessions and 100+ conference presentations in 35 countries His research focus is on critical and creative thinking.

More blogs from app

  • A group of young adults smiling together

    The importance of diversity and inclusion in your curriculum

    By James Warwick

    Systemic racism has a negative impact on the education of many students across the world. This can start as early as preschool.

    Studies have also shown a correlation between teacher expectations and student achievement. Worryingly, these expectations can be negatively affected by racial prejudice.

    Education should be a powerful force for social change

    In recent history, various events have sparked a global uprising against systemic racism and discrimination. Protests have touched every part of society, from arts to sports to politics to education. A key demand is for real, structural change to society so that the lives of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) are valued as they should be.

    Mutuma Ruteere, former UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, “education has a central role in creating new values and attitudes and providing us with important tools for addressing deep-rooted discrimination and the legacy of historical injustices.”

    Promoting diversity and inclusion

    As we look to the future, and imagine a world we want to live in, it’s important to examine how we create these materials and courses. Our aim is to ensure that what we produce is bias-free, inclusive and actively anti-racist.

    Education will always remain a key instrument for disarming ignorance and bigotry.

    We set up an Employee Resource Group (ERG), which has created a set of principles for app authors and editors. The group’s aim is to lay the groundwork for courses that reflect all parts of a diverse society.

    The guidelines were developed by our BAME and African American ERGs. Ade Gachegua led the project alongside internal and external consultants, including the author of the , Dr. Jason Arday.

    Challenges to overcome together

    The guidelines identified five main challenges and suggested the following ways to overcome them:

    1. Underrepresentation

    Are people from a BIPOC background equally represented in educational products? The guidelines recommend that people of different ethnicities should be included in all course material and portrayed as equal to one another.

    Choosing texts and pictures which promote racial equality is also important.

    2. Exaggerated negative associations

    Negative associations are exaggerated when unfavorable characteristics or traits are linked to people of minority ethnicities again and again. This is how stereotypes are built and reinforced in the minds of learners.

    We can take steps to prevent this by choosing our language carefully, avoiding racist texts and refuting any suggestion that behavior is linked to one ethnicity more than another.

    3. Limited positive associations

    Stereotypes of all kinds can be harmful - even positive ones. The guidelines recommend including people from minority ethnicities as positive role models in all contexts, not just the ones they might be traditionally associated with.

    This way, we broaden our learners’ horizons and show them that they have the potential to succeed in any field, regardless of their background.

    4. Missing stories

    When it comes to contributing to public life, individuals from minority ethnicities are often overlooked. For example, when it comes to history, educators tend to disregard contributions from ethnic minorities.

    It’s not because their contributions are less significant, but because the long history of racism has led to their contributions to public life being more limited and deliberately overlooked.

    It’s important that educational materials include these ‘missing stories.’ This helps learners to develop a richer and more diverse view of society and its participants.

    5. The ‘problem’ frame

    Educational texts often speak about people from BIPOC backgrounds as helpless victims of their ‘own’ disadvantage. Instead, we need to view racism as a systemic, social and institutionalized problem, external to the individuals that it affects.

    Authors and editors use the guidelines and an accompanying checklist to ensure that our courses reflect all parts of a diverse society. This means that you can be confident that the classroom materials you’re using to teach your students will empower each and every one of them to reach their full potential.

    You can apply this checklist to your own teaching and resources to help you ensure that what you are covering is diverse and inclusive. Making for a more positive classroom experience for all.

  • A child sat at a desk with a pen in hand, looking up at their teacher and smiling

    Dyslexia and ELT: How to help young learners in the classroom

    By Joanna Wiseman

    When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia?

  • Students sat at desks in a classroom working

    Learning from mistakes: Using exam errors to perfect your English

    By

    Taking English exams can be intimidating and challenging. Everyone has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and it's common to make the same kinds of mistakes in an exam.

    It’s possible to make use of this though, and improve your English from the mistakes you make. Today in our language learning blog, we discuss how we can use exam errors to perfect and improve your English.

    1. Find a pattern

    Firstly, you want to establish what your weak and strong points are. Write these down somewhere each time and build up a record. It's essential to take note of the mistakes you make and try to see if there's a pattern.
    Perhaps mistakes happen on:

    • A specific type or style of question
    • Questions relating to the same topic area
    • A particular way the exam is delivered (like spoken or written)

    These are only a few examples, but recognizing patterns or similarities can help you focus on areas that need improvement or extra attention.

    2. Rationalize and understand your mistakes

    Making mistakes in an exam can really impact a person's confidence, but if you can, look back and rationalize why that mistake was made. It can help your confidence in the future. Sometimes mistakes are made just because of a misinterpretation, perhaps a question wasn’t read correctly, and you realize you knew the answer after all.

    Remember, the situation of being in an exam can be stressful and you may not think or respond in the way you normally would outside of the exam room, so don't be too hard on yourself.
    Mistakes happen in the real world every day, and being able to look back at them and examine them critically is a valuable skill.

    3. Compare and team up with peers

    As we’ve already mentioned, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It can be a great idea to compare your mistakes with others; they may be making the same ones.

    You can team up and try to tackle them together, or you may know someone whose strength is in your weak areas (and vice versa). It's helpful to team up and help each other. They might have some handy tips and techniques for you to try.

    4. Experiment with study techniques

    It's good to switch up techniques at times and your errors might be giving you some guidance on doing so. If you tend to make errors with your spoken English, consider study techniques that work on that – like using recall or incorporating music to strengthen your speech.

    Perhaps memory is an issue, so using tools like flashcards can help you. Some techniques focus on and help improve some areas more than others, so there isn’t one solution for all. Make sure to experiment and see what works for you.

    5. Repetition

    Perhaps an obvious one, but just repeating and practicing the questions/tasks you’ve gotten wrong in the exam is a good approach. By doing it over and over again, with some persistence, it ends up being retained in your long-term memory.

    You may want to study variations of the questions you struggle with, as exams tend to alter their questions and you don’t want to be thrown off in an exam if they reword/change the question slightly.

    The next time you review your exam results, remember these steps, look for patterns, examine your thought process and don’t be afraid to ask others for help. With enough practice, those errors should be things of the past.