The textbook is the basic school book which is designed on the basis of the curriculum and in accordance with the norms of the education process. The aim of this paper is reflected primarily in the emphasis placed on the relevance of the structure and content of foreign language textbooks, as well as their proper and correct organisation and didactic design. Our intentions are also reflected in the effort to highlight the importance of numerous didactic functions of school textbooks which represent a trustworthy, comprehensive, coherent and systemic source of knowledge where the curricular content is most competently demonstrated and presented. Textbooks direct, shape and orientate the teaching process, they stimulate the development of the students’ mental abilities and contribute to the achievement of the best possible mutual interaction among the elements of the ‘didactic triangle’: students, teachers and curricular content. Which didactic function will have specific effects and at what time interval of the teaching process—this depends primarily on the aim of the learning process. All contents of textbook lessons which present certain topics should be adequately adjusted in didactic terms. During the conceptualisation of foreign language textbooks, it is particularly important to adjust the textbooks’ contents to the intellectual profile, vital needs and experience of the students. It is necessary to interpret the envisaged curricular units through numerous and various forms, to pay attention to the different language skills of the students, the degree of differentiation among individual cognitive styles, different paces of learning and mastering a foreign language. Texts in school books need to be interesting and easy to learn; they should broaden information in the field of culture, encourage the students’ initiatives and their desire to enter communication. In this regard, it is also important to pay attention to the number of new lexical units and exercises, as well as the degree of connection among linguistic contents. The teacher is an irreplaceable subject in the learning process. He or she performs a coordinative and regulative function, connecting, integrating, mediating, harmonising the actions and the relationship between the textbook and the students. A textbook’s success depends largely on the manner in which the teacher presents the linguistic material. He or she should oppose formalism and routineness due to the application of the textbook structure. A foreign (Russian) language teacher needs to take a slightly independent and critical approach to the textbook, to carefully and expertly analyse the provided school book texts, to improve, perfect, upgrade and adjust them to the concrete linguistic situation. When teachers adopt such a position in regard to the textbook, this contributes to the students’ more creative, more relaxed and more open attitude towards the textbook structure which they actively use in class. Today, foreign language textbooks reflect the adequate methodical efforts to adjust new generations of foreign language textbook structures to the changed conditions of the international sociolinguistic position and the linguo-didactic functioning of each foreign language in numerous sociocultural settings. The goal of such textbooks is to encourage, develop and affirm the sociocultural and communicative knowledge and skills of the students in the field of intercultural communicative education.