Scaffolding Soft Skills in Business English Education: Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching Negotiation, Leadership, and Storytelling

Soft skills such as negotiation, leadership communication, and storytelling have become decisive factors in professional success within global business environments, yet they are frequently under-emphasised or inconsistently developed in Business English courses. This mixed-methods study investigated pedagogical strategies for systematically scaffolding these competencies among undergraduate learners. Quantitative data were gathered through pre- and post-intervention questionnaires administered to ۱۲۸ students across four intact classes, measuring self-perceived competence in negotiation, leadership communication, and storytelling. Qualitative data comprised semi-structured interviews with ۱۶ students and six instructors, classroom observations of ۲۴ project-based and role-play sessions, and analysis of reflective journals and performance artefacts. A ۱۲-week intervention integrated progressive scaffolding techniques—including modelling, guided practice, collaborative simulation, multimodal storytelling tasks, and structured reflection—within authentic business scenarios. Results revealed statistically significant gains across all three soft-skill domains (p <. ۰۰۱), with the largest effect sizes in negotiation and storytelling. Qualitative findings indicated that progressive scaffolding, authentic audience pressure, focused peer feedback, and explicit attention to pragmatic and narrative resources were perceived as most facilitative. Key challenges included time constraints within existing syllabi, variation in learners’ prior soft-skill exposure, and the assessment of process-oriented competencies. The study proposes a practical pedagogical framework for embedding soft-skill scaffolding in Business English education and discusses implications for curriculum design, teacher professional development, and assessment practices that recognise both linguistic and interpersonal dimensions of professional communicative competence.

کلیدواژه ها:

Business English ، soft skills ، negotiation ، leadership communication ، storytelling.