The objective of this article is to study the possibilities of creating a personal brand of a higher education teacher, its peculiarities and values in the conditions of the region. A description of the national character, mentality of the Sakha people is given for a better understanding the peculiarities of the university teacher’s brand creating in the region. The results of a sociological survey in three institutions of the republic have shown that today the understanding of the importance of developing a personal brand in the higher schools of the republic is superficial. The factors that contribute to the creation of a personal brand in the scientific and educational environment have been investigated. Recommendations for the step-by-step forming a personal brand are offered.

Introduction. The higher education system is being modernized at the Master’s level according to the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards 3++. Teaching English to non-English major students shows that the intensive use of electronic learning tools requires the development of a system of tasks for effective language training. The purpose of the article is to develop a system of tasks for the developing EFL graduates’ communicative competence and to prove its effectiveness in teaching practice. Materials and methods. The pilot training was conducted at the North-Eastern Federal University named after M. K. Ammosov (N=90) and the Arctic State University of Agriculture and Technology (N=60) during one academic year. Classes were conducted both in full-time and remotely using the Zoom platform and the virtual learning environment Moodle. The entrance and final diagnostics were conducted in all four English skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to determine the level of EFL communicative competence in Master’s students. Results of the study. The obtained results of the diagnostic stage determined the directions of training in order to improve students’ EFL communicative competence: 1) modernization of the language education (updating the English course content); 2) development of a system of tasks for the organizing distance learning (updating of the educational and methodological complex). The results of the final testing indicate an increase in the level of EFL communicative competence at the end of the pilot training: 1) the average value for listening, speaking and writing increased by 1.5 times at the significance level p≤0.01; 2) the average value for reading increased by 2.5 times at the significance level p≤0.01.

The authors consider the abilities of the Arctic component in languages and literature teaching in a higher educational institution of culture and arts as a factor to improve the students' intercultural communicative competence. The functioning Russian Federal State Standard of Higher Education is aimed at implementing the competency approach, which, in turn, provides for widespread use of active and interactive teaching methods in the educational process, new educational material, and creative approach to teaching methods. They also underline the role of introducing the Arctic component into the content of language courses in growth of student's language personality, since representatives of different nationalities living in the republic, including indigenous peoples of the