The article is dedicated to the issue of developing socio-cultural competence in foreign students during the process of learning Ukrainian as a foreign language through the study of nationally marked non-equivalent vocabulary.In the research, socio-cultural competence is understood as a combination of knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal capacities that enable foreign students to communicate in Ukrainian with native speakers in various situations according to norms of speech and behavior based on tolerance, and it is considered as a holistic system of interrelated components: country studies, linguistic country studies, social, and sociolinguistic.It is noted that teaching Ukrainian to foreign students leads to the formation of their intercultural linguistic identity, which is conditioned by the unity of language and culture education and studying Ukrainian as a foreign language in a context of cultural dialogue.The work states that different cultural phenomena are recorded, preserved, and transmitted using lexical-grammatical forms, particularly in nationally specific lexical units and non-equivalent vocabulary, which are inherent to one language and absent in another.The author includes common gender nouns -lexemes reflecting the worldviews and value orientations of the Ukrainian people, serving as a means of representing the linguistic worldview, illustrating various aspects of the people's life, preserving rich information about customs and traditions of the Ukrainian linguo-cultural society, its value system, and acting as a mental mirror of national-cultural values.The author argues the necessity of focusing on the subtopic "Nouns of Common Gender" during Ukrainian language lessons while studying the theme "Gender of Nouns".The aim is to acquaint foreign students with this important category of nouns.The author provides examples of tasks on the topic "Ukrainian Nouns of Common Gender" for practical classes and outlines prospects for further research