The research presents vision of the importance of modern professional foreign language education and its impact on the professional development of the individual, the possession of techniques and methods of professional communication, taking into account the specifics of the culture of the interlocutor. Comprehensive development of personality and specialist is currently one of the most priority areas of the Russian system of professional foreign language education, which makes the problem presented in this study relevant. In this study: 1) the relevance is indicated and the need for disclosure of the specifics of specialist training by means of professional foreign language education is determined; 2) the specifics of professional foreign language education as: a) an instrument of successful human activity in a multicultural community; b) a factor in the de-velopment of professional language consciousness and the culture of speech communication. A foreign language as an academic subject has always occupied a special place in the education of a specialist of any profession: proficiency in at least one foreign language is important and in de-mand today within the framework of international intercultural communication; 3) the characteristics of strategic directions in teaching language and culture in a non-linguistic university are presented; 4) the content of professional foreign language communicative competence of a future specialist is clarified; 5) the main vectors of innovative language and culture teaching within the framework of professional foreign language training of a specialist are proposed.

The relevance of the study is substantiated by the importance of the development of students’ social and cultural competence as a component of professional foreign-language communicative competence in the training of future specialists of any profile in order to develop their ability for successful intercultural interaction. We reveal the peculiarity of the development of social and cultural skills of future specialists on the example of a research project. Research project based on the theme “Fashion. Business Fashion” is presented as an effective tool for learning foreign language culture at the value level, establishing direct links with foreign-language society, developing a secondary language personality, as well as the ability of students to explore, analyze and critically evaluate the language material with which they work in the process of learning a foreign language for special purposes. We determine the principles, on which the process of developing a student’s social and cultural skills is based, reveal the content and structure of social and cultural skills. The didactic potential of the topic “Fashion” for the development of social and cultural competence is substantiated. The stages of work on linguistic material of the topic are disclosed and the research steps of solving the problem are shown. The results obtained are of practical importance and can be used in solving pedagogical problems while preparing future bachelors for successful intercultural foreign language communication.