IMPLEMENTING THE ‘FOUR CS’ SKILLS INTO THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM THROUGH COOPERATIVE LEARNING TO PROMOTE KAZAKH YOUTH COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Abstract

The sustained development of technology has drastically changed how people function in society. Society urges fostering social skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration for a person's success. The proliferation of those skills has been the aim of education contexts worldwide, particularly in Kazakhstan. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the suitability and readiness of these contexts for implementation. Our study is aimed at considering teaching strategies that might foster implementation of the ‘Four Cs’ skills in classrooms to determine how best to integrate these new tools into a language learning environment and understand what learning model can and should be used at a high school to enable Kazakh students to comfortably and confidently communicate ideas, give input in team meetings, conversations and interactions with their external stakeholders. Results showed that suggested teaching strategies have significantly contributed to the development of language learners' ability to generate ideas, build argumentation, highlight the lack of information and search, develop and formulate ideas, evaluate one's assumptions and judgments, accept the goals of a group, and assess overall results. In addition, these integrated skills allow students to learn independently, cooperate with others, and prove themselves in research activities. The study results suggest that mastering the ‘Four Cs’ skills in language classrooms based on cooperative learning accelerates the development of communication skills in Kazakh youth, offering a promising future for language education in Kazakhstan.