Representation of cognitive area and revealing terminological characteristics of the Russian and English names of building materials (NBMs) determine the topicality of the research and the article’s problematic. The authors of the article analyze the Russian and English NBMs and reveal their main stages with the comparative description, and chооse the definition of the names, in which the basic word-identifier of the leading cognitive features have been highlighted. These features have become the basics for the formation of the thematic groups. The classification of the names of building materials is formed from five groups: organic materials / orgonicheskie materialy; inorganic materials / neorgonicheskie materialy; metals and metal products / metaly i izdelija iz nih; other building materials / prochie stroitel’nye materialy; properties of building materials / svojstva stroitel’nyh materialov. Properties of building materials is subdivided into models according to their structural characteristics: physical properties / fizicheskie svoystva; mechanical properties / mehanicheskie svojstva; defects / defekty.

The study investigates the pedagogical aspect of forming the professionally significant language skills of future engineers. The results emphasize the determining role of employees who are called “linear personnel”. It stands out that one of the factors ensuring the successfulness and effectiveness of the professional activities of a linear engineer is his ability to act confidently in the foreign environments, receive, process and transmit professionally significant information in a foreign language. In justice to previous research in this direction, we note that they practically do not reflect the problems of developing professionally significant language skills in a technical university that are directly related to the types and functions of an engineer’s professional activity. The results obtained during the experiment showed that situational language teaching characterized by the verbal and cogitative task, problems is an effective means of forming the professionally significant language skills of future engineers. Situations developed and tested by the authors in the training courses build up the language interaction close to as real as in various professional situations.