The author considers opportunities of usage of illustrations in textbooks for foreign language teaching for higher educational establishment' students and comes to a conclusion that, in spite of an idea that there's no requirement for such illustrations, it is possible and it is necessary to use them.The selection of illustrations for teaching foreign language in high school is one of the most complex and least developed textbook design problems. Illustrating university textbooks in native methods of teaching is not actually investigated and needs attention as illustrators and researchers, teachers and practitioners, as no systematic work with illustrative material leads to a lack of ability and willingness of future teachers to continue working with images in high school. The prospect of further scientific research is to analyze the possibilities of illustrating books for those learning the language at «Advanced» level, and opportunities of illustrating books for professional English teachers and teachers of higher school.Modern methods of teaching foreign languages in higher education do not only approve the possibility of the use of illustrations, but also trying to prove their positive impact on learning. Acting on the senses, visibility means more complete representation of an image or concept that promotes more active understanding of the material.The author emphasizes on the thought that this statement is caused by the limited choice of teaching and methodical complexes and lack of appropriate financing, while skilled teachers compensate the absence of illustrations by their own individual pictures. In this article the chosen modern literature on this question which proves an opportunity and necessity of illustrations usage for optimization of the foreign language teaching in higher educational institutions is analyzed.
SOCIO-CULTURAL COMPETENCE FORMATION IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS