Many instructors willing to undertake teaching in a foreign language are progressively noticing the need to improve the quality of classroom discourse and lecturing styles, so that students can capture and process the information delivered more efficiently. Mind­maps can be an important and effective asset to anyone who wants to learn a language. They are considered to be a great way to brainstorm and generate more ideas. They help to create a number of small ideas from one big idea, to see how different ideas could be connected together and to create a plan of action. They break from the traditional way of thinking when learning, and therefore they encourage creativity - and this can be achieved only when there are no restrictions, criticism and judging. The result should be a very creative, new solution to problems, a generation of original, relaxed and informal ideas. The article demonstrates how mind mapping technique can be used to improve language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening in higher education settings; moreover, it concerns positive and negative aspects of the use of mind mapping, purposes it may serve, implications, suggestions, and recommendations for mind mapping strategies for teachers and students.

This work presents the realisation of such principles of communicative-cognitive approach as the principle of integrated kinds of speech activity, the principle of systematicity, the principle of functionality in correlation with the principle of information transfer, the principle of unity of training, education and development, the principle of the cognitive gap, the principle of authenticity based on the samples of exercises of lexico-grammatical competence and authentic construction projects for future civil engineers. The English language lexico-grammatical competence model demonstrates the structure of its content on the level of knowledge and skills; preparatory, main, and advanced stages of linguistic competence formation in correlation with such levels of understanding of professionally-oriented texts as verbally-visual complex has been presented. The main peculiarities of the model’s content have been highlighted. The system of lexico-grammatical competence formation includes three complexes of exercises: actualisation of lexico-grammatical knowledge on the level of the lexical unit and sentence (reading, speaking); on the formation and improvement of lexico-grammatical skills on the level of the lexical unit, sentence (reading, speaking); the formation and improvement of lexico-grammatical skills on the level of minitexts in speaking and components of the verbal- -visual complex (statistical tables, notes) in reading, on the formation and improvement of lexico-grammatical skills on the level of the sketch construction project as verbal-visual complex has been explained and demonstrated. The samples of exercises in lexico-grammatical competence formation within the communicative-cognitive approach have been presented. The explanation of the communicative- cognitive approach’s principles with the help of the system of exercises has been introduced. The pedagogical experiment verifies the effectiveness of lexico-grammatical competence formation in the framework of the communicative-cognitive approach for civil engineering students with the help of one factor disperse analysis. Twelve students from each group (CE21, TPD22, TBC23) have been chosen to compare their results before the experimental test, control test, and after the experimental test within this approach.