In today's ever-changing globalized world the engineer's professionalism requires not only technical excellence, but also the knowledge of human relationships and ability of intercultural communication in order to work effectively with foreign colleagues, and to be competitive in the labor market. The aim of the current research is to demonstrate the indispensable need of the humanities inclusion in engineering education.

The authors advocate that literature belonging to the humanities can encourage foreign language students to discover a foreign culture. It is stated that foreign fiction, especially poetry, serves as a possible tool to familiarize foreign language learners with an author's native culture, enables them to understand better cultural values, and fosters cultural awareness. The current research investigates the way of incorporation foreign fiction into STEM students' curriculum. The results of the surveys of STEM students and ESL teachers prove the feasibility of such integration by means of the CLIL methodology that enables learners to develop cognitive skills, communicate in a foreign language, understand foreign cultures, and have the curricular subject progression. The authors also focus on how foreign fiction (specifically poetry) can be incorporated into the English language curriculum in the framework of applying the SOFT CLIL aimed at teaching topics from the curriculum as a part of an ESL course.

The application of SOFT CLIL to teaching English STEM students will enable learners to understand cultural values from cultural insiders' perspective and foster students' cultural awareness, their ability to think critically, and to communicate in English efficiently.