Leadership skills, teamworking skills, communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are among transferable skills vital for every profession that university graduates need as long as they are professionally active, irrespective of their field of study, career advancement, area of responsibility or professional reorientation. Through team presentations, students are exposed to and process complex information to provide solutions to problems, organize and communicate specialized knowledge in a professional manner. The article views team presentations as interactive learning environments simulating professional interactions and enabling assimilation of transferable skills, particularly key linguistic and communication skills crucial for study and future employment opportunities.

The main goal of the authors is to devise a linguistic/communication skills inventory helpful not just for successful academic results but also for smooth career development. The second goal is to demonstrate how team presentations as instantiations of task-based learning, can be used in the class to develop such an effective skill base. Considering their teaching experience, the authors view this inventory at the intersection of linguistic proficiency and communication apprehension since practice demonstrated the students’ speaking skills are extremely heterogeneous from students who are proficient language speakers but poor communicators to students who are excellent communicators but poor language speakers.