Development of professional communicative competence of IT-students through learning foreign language for specific purposes

In solving the problem of improving the quality of higher technical education, special attention has been paid to the development of engineers' professional competence, consisting of cultural, social, linguistic and humanities components. In this context, learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), which enables students to adapt quickly to new challenges of academic and professional communities, is becoming very important - provoking interest and not just among university teachers. In this article, the historical background of ESP study is presented, its development as a branch of applied linguistics, and potential areas for further investigation. The aim of this article is to sum up the world's experience in order to define basic criteria that can be the foundation for ESP course design. The ultimate purpose is to introduce the model of an ESP course developed at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) to IT-students.