Keywords

1 Introduction

As more and more employers value the importance of soft skills in the workplace, communication remains of paramount importance [1]. Young graduates who demonstrate communication skills are more likely to find their first job and to progress in their careers, as communication skills permeate all aspects of contemporary working environments and are required to help appropriate decision making. An effective communicator has better chances to be collaborative, confident, adaptable, and able to face difficulties. Therefore, higher education institutions in preparing students for a career offer a professional communication course.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Importance of Soft Skills at the Workplace

The term ‘soft skills’ is defined by academics, scholars, and professionals in multiple ways. According to Haselberger and other authors within the ModEs project ‘Soft skills represent a dynamic combination of cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, interpersonal, intellectual, and practical skills. Soft skills help people to adapt and behave positively so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of their professional and everyday life.’ [2]. ‘Life skills, social skills, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, transversal competences, social competences, and meta-competences are commonly used to refer to the ‘emotional side’ of human beings, in opposition to the IQ (Intelligent Quotient) component related to hard skills [3].

Even though various ways are used to describe ‘soft skills’ there is ‘a general agreement that they are related to people-oriented skills and self-management skills’ which are also’ ‘instrumental in improving the productivity of workforce and increasingly linked to the employability of individuals’ [4]. “In a 2021 review of more than 80 million job postings across 22 industry sectors, the educational nonprofit organization America Succeeds discovered that almost two-thirds of job listings included soft skills among their qualifications, and seven of the ten most in-demand skills were soft” [5]. Even industries requiring technical skills, such as the energy sector, have increased their requirements for soft skills in job postings by 18 percentage points in the last decade while the demand for hard skills has remained flat [6]. Collaborative research conducted by The Protocol School of Washington DC, Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Stanford research Institute ‘reveals that technical skills and knowledge account for about 15 percent of the reason an individual gets a job, keeps a job, and advances in that job. The remaining 85% of job success is based on an individual’s soft skills, while it is estimated that 2/3 of all jobs in Australia will rely on soft skills by 2030 [7].

Soft skills are relevant, transferable and keep an individual highly employable [8]. Accepting this or any other description of soft skills, still when it comes to listing them communication is at the top of the list. Communication skills include a range of aspects from basic language proficiency to advanced topics like Dialectic or Rhetoric, which are sophisticated skills. These skills are not only necessary for a person’s professional career, but are even more contributing to one’s so-called social competence, a fact which applies to many other soft skills, too [9]. It is evident that young professionals must complement their hard skills with soft ones to get hired and start their career.

2.2 Teaching GenZ

Undergraduate students who belong primarily to generation Z (students who were born between 1990 and 2010) have the wrong perception of the use of oral language, which anyway they use less in their everyday life [10].

Online platforms and social media are the primary means of communication for young adults. They prefer texting to speaking. ‘Because of the transient nature of the social media and fast pace of communication, to achieve a certain level of brevity, interactions on these platforms have devolved into different peculiar languages, slangs and abbreviations’. These have evolved into strong communication tools that youths use heavily in their interactions both online and offline. ‘But more worrisome is that many young people could not differentiate between their use of language on social media and in formal writings, academic matters, and examinations’ [11].

Given the circumstances, the practice and use of oral language has become essential in preparing learners for their professional lives. Students must comprehend the differences between slang used in social media, with the language used in classrooms, social gatherings, workplace etc. In other words, they must connect the circumstances, place/audience/purpose, with the language use. At the same time, it is essential to comprehend differences between oral and written language, as the first step in becoming effective communicators. The e-mails that educators receive are a great example of students’ confusion when it comes to language use. At times those messages resemble SMS’ directed to a friend rather than a message directed to a professor. Use of abbreviations, lack of signature or topic sentence, lack of clarity and coherence are some of the common characteristics. In a continuous need to keep up with current issues, improve students’ class experience and facilitate the learning process educators try out various methods and tools.

2.3 Teaching Professional Communication in College

Academics, business executives and recruiting companies voice the need for young professionals to improve their soft skills ‘because these skills are essential for success’ [12]. A nationwide survey of more than 700 employers determined that the deficit between job candidates required and actual skills was greatest for communication abilities [13]. The need for the acquisition of communication skills is covered by a ‘professional communication’ course that is taught in all academic disciplines in higher education. This introductory course is a fundamental part of the curricula at many colleges and universities throughout the United States. Interestingly, as the finding of the research done in 2008 by Russ, suggests, ‘most instructors require almost three times as many writing assignments as speaking assignments’ [14]. Students are supposed to sharpen their oral and written skills by delivering speeches and writing e-mails, reports, proposals, etc. to prepare for their professional career. Nevertheless, the written component is disproportional in comparison to the oral one. Given that all college students are required to take courses in research and academic writing before registering in this course, they have already learned basic writing structures. But, since the emphasis is given on the written aspect of the course, the practice of oral language in delivering speeches is not considered as important as following the given structures. Recent evidence has suggested that most college graduates lack sufficient oral communication skills and the need for improving that aspect is pressing [15].

3 Methodological Considerations

This is a working paper following a descriptive approach, building on secondary research and on teaching experience and observation. We follow an inductive approach of building on classroom experience and aligning with existing literature before forming hypotheses that can be empirically tested with different methods. Preliminary findings are presented which need further empirical verification [16].

4 Towards a Case Study: Teaching Professional Communication at Deree, the American College of Greece

We have designed a professional communication course focusing on structure and etiquette rather than just on content and eloquence. Throughout the course, we introduce specifically two structures: the informative structure, exemplified by the inverted pyramid, and the persuasive structure which includes various problem–solution approaches as well as motivated sequence discussed below. Then, we teach the purposes and advantages of oral and written etiquette, as ways to connect with the audience, demonstrate professionalism and communicate more effectively. Often, these structures, even though carrying common characteristics, for the young learners seem difficult and confusing. However, if students are exposed to the oral component of the course first, practice, prepare and deliver different speeches, we observe that the learning process can be facilitated.

The delivery of a speech, even an impromptu one for practice in the classroom, is experiential learning whose definition and scope we provide, based on the Experiential Learning Institute [17]. ‘Experiential learning describes the ideal process of learning, invites you to understand yourself as a learner, and empowers you to take charge of your own learning and development’. According to David A. Kolb, an educational theorist ‘the experiential learning cycle is a four-step learning process that is applied multiple times in every interaction and experience: Experience—Reflect—Think—Act… This cycle is so natural and organic that people engage in it without being aware that they are learning. It happens almost effortlessly all the time and is constantly transforming our lives’. For example, students practice speaking by delivering short impromptu speeches to become comfortable within the classroom environment, while preparing for the first speech and learning its structure. Informative speeches are usually taught before persuasive ones, since they are easier, so students can concentrate on their delivery, language, voice, and body language. Starting with impromptu speeches helps students understand not only the importance of body language but also the importance of preparation and of great content organization which will help audiences follow and engage.

Speech structures, both informative and persuasive, then, become easier for students to comprehend and use since the whole process is experiential. It helps them comprehend differences between expressing ideas orally or written. At the same time, the practice of delivering short speeches and listening to others allows them to gain a deeper understanding of those structures and their logic. As a result, without realizing it students assimilate and remember informative and persuasive structures. Listening, the part they must choose to practice, becomes the tool to discover what the characteristics of an interesting speaker are, one that maintains the audiences’ attention no matter what the topic is. Qualitative peer evaluation and commentary that follows each speech helps students concentrate, identify mistakes, and develop their critical skills. What is noteworthy however, is that those speech structures, as well as the features of oral language are the tools learners can apply for structuring most written communication assessments as well, such as e-mails or proposals.

Basic characteristics of oral language are the use of personal pronouns (I, me, we, our, us), shorter thought units that are easy to follow (shorter sentences), precise words to ensure audience understanding (colloquial and familiar), repetition of words and phrases to emphasize ideas, fewer references to previously state information, i.e. “as mentioned above” [18]. Those same characteristics, though, are necessary to use for creating an effective e-mail at the workplace. It needs to be clear and get to the point fast, use short sentences, precise words and it is always personal. Most importantly it follows the same structures of speech, whether informative or persuasive.

For example, one needs to get the audience’s attention first, then provide them with the credibility material—to give them a reason to listen and last with a short and specific thesis statement to prepare them for what will be discussed. Moving to the main body, main points are analyzed/described/explained and supported. Last, a clear conclusion with a summary and remarks helps listeners to retain information. Following the exact same structure will allow students to create a clear and concise written message. First, one gets the reader’s attention, gives them a reason to read further and provides them with a clear topic. Then, the analysis/explanation/description of the topic leads to a specific conclusion.

Similarly, when it comes to persuasive speeches, the motivated sequence design, which is used in business extensively, has 5 steps: Attention, Need (for change), Satisfaction, Visualization, Action. [19]. These five steps are also necessary in writing any persuasive e-mail. The comprehension of this structure provides students with the needed tools to deliver clear persuasive speeches and write to the point persuasive messages. First, one gets the attention of the listener/reader, then reveals the problem that is followed by the offered solution. The listener/reader will visualize the results of the solution and how this will positively or negatively affect their lives before reaching the final part in which clear directions of what needs to be done is given. Oral and written messages, then, vary when it comes to content and medium, but present essential similarities when it comes to structure and the need to apply the appropriate etiquette. As students learn conciseness and editing for both oral and written texts, they also learn that written texts like press releases or reports rely on an informative structure while proposals, for example, rely on persuasive structures. Thus, the teaching of structures becomes not only a cognitive soft skill but also a transferable skill that allows students to carry this knowledge and apply it in various domains when it comes to professional communication.

Furthermore, within any professional environment e-mail communication has become very important as emails carry the entire load of professional documentation and day-to-day alignment. A load of one hundred or more messages are found in employers’ inboxes every morning while, simultaneously, appropriate email writing remains an issue. A way to ease this communication is effective writing. Understanding structures in combination with etiquette and the level of formality of an email or its attached documentation enables students to acquire an understanding of various nuances of organizational activity in relation to communication. The teaching of professional communication is challenging, and instructors use various methods and activities in a continuous effort to enhance the learning process. No matter the methods used by any instructor the use of oral structures as a basis for effective communication, oral and written can be proven useful.

5 Conclusion

To conclude, soft skills increase employability and have become more necessary than the hard ones. Teaching soft skills and in particular communication ones, at a college level in an ever-changing professional environment will remain a challenge, especially since academic knowledge focuses mostly on producing and instilling hard skills. The digital environment and the pandemic caused seismic changes in the way professional communication is practiced and documented and we still do not know the extent to which these changes will solidify or fade out in time. Instructors focusing on soft skills need to find an optimal balance between theory and practice so that on the one hand they instill practical and transferable skills that can be use, while on the other hand ensuring that such skills can apply in different settings and survive constantly evolving practices. The suggestion this paper offers is based on teaching experience and when needed data will be collected formal research and results will be presented. Still, the use of oral structures and practices remains an important tool in teaching professional communication. Professionals who have the skill of communicating effectively are likely to build better professional relationships, encounter fewer obstacles and more opportunities to bring their ideas to fruition. In the end, this is what matters. Universities may contribute for the qualification of potential employees [20,21,22]. Future research could also scrutinize the extent to which digital applications have changed the form and content of business documents, and best practices around their writing and dissemination, considering that less reading, more visualization, and short attention spans affect decision making to a significant extent.