The main aim of learning a foreign language is the development of students foreign language communicative competence which will allow them to integrate as much as possible into the international professional community. This is an important condition for the social adaptation of students to modern life. In the context of the transition from a knowledge-based approach to teaching to a competency-based approach, a change in value orientations, the teacher needs new methods and technologies that allow the teacher to identify the student’s knowledge, update it, add what is missing, structure the training material, and teach not only to remember and reproduce, but put them into practice. Methods that organize learning through desire, stimulate students' learning and natural curiosity, motivate interest in the independent acquisition of knowledge. The article deals with the role and importance of applying a new "competence-based approach" in the formation and developing students’ intercultural and communicative competence in teaching foreign language. The authors give explanations to such concepts as "competence" and "competency", as well as "competence approach".