The article is devoted to the problems of foreign language teaching strategy in course of its improvement. The improving strategy is aimed at teaching Russian students of higher education. Modern teaching standards in Russian higher educational institutes deprive the natural course of the language performative aspects. Strategies for improving foreign language teaching, a project for optimizing programmes and courses of study are presented in this article. Basic improving tendency concerns traditionally extracted language patterns transformed to pay variety for referential speech environment. In order to improve the process of teaching a foreign language to the university students it is necessary to exclude formalism, thematic division of the course in accordance with the metaphysical foundations of concepts, formal approach and conceptualism in the development of educational tasks, accepted as the basis of most modern curricula. The metaphysical categorical approach is currently regarded as an outdated. Improving educational methods in foreign language teaching encounters regular progressive adaptation of language concepts to pragmatic habitual skills of their use. Language ontology conception is aimed at supporting pragmatic connection between the language scheme of concepts and the speech being performed and does not surpass the language use relevance. To replace the limited approaches of modern education, it is proposed to introduce training programmes based on a communicative approach rejecting the strategy of teaching based upon progressive rewarding item. The foreign language teaching programmes should be developed in accordance with the students’ needs and correspond to current trends. The project of modern courses of teaching foreign language a priory is based on the principle of psychological comfort. Thus, the educational tasks and teaching exercises should perform a simulation of communicative situations, a discussion of current data of the modern information space. The foreign language teaching system is aimed at intensive integration of students with an authentic language environment. Much attention is paid to teaching stylistics and syntagmatic patterns of the foreign language. The practice of oral speech is represented by such modern approaches as the development and discussion of students' own projects. Teaching a foreign language to university students is carried out systematically. In the case when the distribution of the academic load does not allow to organize systematic teaching of the foreign language, the possibilities of modern information technologies are suggested to be implied. Interactive digital platforms are being developed as projects of modern educational technologies to support systematic oral practice and interaction between the trainers and trainees. The experience of implementing educational programs and courses at a university for the under-intermediate level requires a crucial educational program core component, including a semantic stratum of a nonconceptual nature. It is recommended to minimize the content for this basic level, especially for teaching students of non-linguistic specialties. The interchange of the conceptual-thematic approach in teaching a foreign language to a habitual one is approved. It promotes adaptation to a foreign cultural language environment, activates the functional aspects of language skills. There are two approaches in auditory skills development as well. The core strategy of the first is represented by the principle of the information intensification and concentration. The consciousness of a student is introduced into a situation with the most concentrated level of information performed. The second principle is based on a dialectical approach, i.e. to introduce the student into the referential system implemented in dialogues, interviews, etc. Improving at the level of a foreign language class is carried out under the condition of accurately elaborated educational project for mastering the course. Didactic progress in the process of mastering the course is achieved through the intensification of information supplemented by the constitutive influence of experience, i.e. empirically. The major functional styles are proposed to be journalistic, business and scientific (popular science), complementing the texts of a professionally oriented foreign language. An effective method to master the foreign language is to form a model of an authentic linguistic personality by special tasks, in the process of presenting pieces of information, reports, monologues corresponding to the stylistic norms of the foreign language. The mediated cycle of tasks within this approach includes the search for a functional and stylistic equivalent unit, analogies between texts of identical communicative discourse, and discussing the student’s opinion. After mastering predicative and narrative language structures, it is proposed to introduce exercises contributing to the assimilation of the lexical minimum, which is subsequently supplemented by performing various communicative situations. As a variable part some creative tasks, exercises for translation are proposed. The functional-pragmatic aspect, chosen as the basic one for teaching a foreign language, contributes to a ignificant intensification in learning, coordinates a systematic approach in education, allows to establish a balance between the cognitive and habitual aspects of the language oral practice, supports heuristic potential in teaching a foreign language. There is a successful synchronization of students' communicative skills with the authentic language functioning environment. Technological capabilities of artificial intelligence are actively used for the selection of authentic texts, the modulation of communicative situations. An effective complement to the strategy of optimizing curricula and foreign language courses is a didactic approach based on teaching translation skills, taking notes of orally presented texts and speech utterances.