The article is devoted to the question of communicative competence formation, represented in all spheres of professional application in higher education and states that the degree of its formation depends on a person's approach to behave in different social situations. This study examines the essence and structure of communicative competence, as well as the system of its formation while teaching a foreign language to higher education students of economics. Evaluation of the characteristics of developing communicative competence when working with economic texts is carried out as the main communicative unit on the example of the use of specific material in speech. The methodology of the formation of communicative competence among future economists is theoretically determined and experimentally tested through interaction with economic texts in English for professional purposes (49 students aged 17–20 years participated in the research). Analysis of linguistic, psychological, psycholinguistic and methodological bases of communicative competence formation, questionnaires of students and survey results gave grounds for the development of experimental methods of these competences formation by future economists in the process of studying modern foreign language.
The interactive methods of learning from economic texts were developed under a new concept of teaching foreign language for the formation of communicative competence and introduced in experimental groups of learners. The data indicated a significant increase in intermediate and high levels of future economists‟ communicative competences formation in groups with interactive classes.