The national Russian system of education is regulated by a number of laws, among which the Federal State Educational Standard is one of the most important legal documents; it is a guideline governing what skills students must acquire and what they must learn. The paper describes general learning skills that the educational standard requires to develop with the focus on general communicative learning skills (GCLS). The best environment for developing GCLS is a foreign language lesson. In the article, the authors consider what results concerning GCLS can be achieved at every lesson stage and what methods and techniques can be involved in the development process.