This article discusses psychological characteristics of communicative and speech competence of the agriculture faculty students. The authors pay attention to the study of students communication skills in the process of interaction, their ability to translate meaning, skills of information interpretation and effective meaning transfer. The study involved 120 students aged 17 to 23 years (M=20.75, SD=2.25 (37% men). Methods were used: a survey – “Communicative competence” of L. Michelson in the modification of Yu.Z. Gilbukh; testing – subtest No. 6 of the Wechsler test; analytic tasks – a method of supplementing / completing / restoring a speech utterance, a classification method; statistical methods (descriptive statistics , Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test). The study found that first-year students differ from senior students in communicative competence. The speech competence of graduate students in a qualitative aspect is better developed, however, it is distorted by the influence of personal characteristics and the situation. The research prospects are aimed at studying the differences in speech and communicative competence of students who completed training courses on the development of these abilities. It is also promising to study the characteristics of the process of meaning, as variables in the formation of speech and communicative competence.